Internet Shutdown in Iran; “All of Us Are Fine, But Don’t Believe It”

Javad Zarif was not permitted to visit his ailing friend’s bedside in New York; he tweeted, “Through technology I saw him in Yemen.” With the internet shutdown in Iran, users outside the borders are writing about “being uninformed,” and domestic journalists are describing a diminished horizon of visibility.

Her finger is frozen on her phone screen. She has selected the video call option on WhatsApp and is waiting for her mother to pick up. She has read news about unrest in Iran and watched several videos of fires in her city, in streets that are not unfamiliar to her. This is the many-th time she is trying not only to hear her parents’ voices but to see their faces so that her mind might be eased, to hear from them what is happening in the city. The phone rings and rings, and all she sees is her own face; worried, helpless, and alone. Whoever she calls, she only sees herself on the screen.

Nahid is not the only Iranian who is worried about Iran these days and the events unfolding in that country.

With the escalation of recent unrest in Iran that began with rising gasoline prices, the government has almost completely cut off Iranian users’ internet access. The reason for this severe measure by the government might be traced to its fear of the power of organizing protests through the internet or preventing the spread of images and text about the current situation.

Domestic websites have written about the losses and damages that the internet shutdown has caused to the commercial, business, industrial, and tourism sectors, but not about releasing the “monster of misinformation” that, as if it emerged from a magic lamp with the internet shutdown, has engulfed Iran like a cloud.

A scroll through social networks like Twitter and Instagram shows what misinformation has done to the state of citizens.

Being Uninformed About Iran and the New Meaning of “Estrangement”

There is no shortage of Iranian citizens living outside Iran who are writing on Twitter about the estrangement they suddenly felt. One user writes: “‘Estrangement in estrangement’ must be just like this. Uninformed about home, as if everything has become one-way, uninformed about friends and family and uninformed about Iran.” For many Iranian citizens living in other countries, it is only with this severing of connection that geographical distances have gained meaning; distances that virtual space had made colorless.

Now with the near-total internet shutdown, it is as if millions of people are trapped in a narrow glass container surrounded by darkness on all sides. Everyone “from outside” is staring into this narrow, dark, and murky space hoping to see something, to see with their own eyes so they can believe what “Western and foreign media” are writing and saying based on limited published photos and videos, “is a misuse,” “an exaggeration,” and “a conspiracy.” But instead of the government wiping the glass clean, instead of allowing the free flow of information to give the viewer and reader the power to discern and distinguish, it tightens the circle.

In such a space where bridges have been demolished and Iran has become as distant and unreachable as the geographical distance between them, the space of misinformation and the trickle of leaked information multiplies the “catastrophic dimensions” of every news and image many times over.

Nahid’s phone rings. It is her father’s number. Now her father and mother’s faces are inscribed on the magical screen again. Both are smiling, and her mother immediately says: “We were constantly trying to call, we just got our internet back. If it gets cut off, know that all of us are fine.” Her father says nothing, resting his hand under his chin, staring intently at his daughter, as if he does not want to miss a moment, as if he does not trust the connection will be re-established. Her mother speaks, saying everything is calm, but shakes her head and with a wave of her hand indicates: “Don’t believe it.” The connection is cut. Her father and mother are pulled back down into the narrow dark space.

What We Don’t See Is Called “Family Dispute”

History repeats itself. Like scenes from the film “Lovely Bastards.” As if it is the fate of a nation that every few years is accustomed to telling relatives and loved ones on the other side of the world over phone and Skype and WhatsApp and others, “Everything is fine,” and having them read that “it is a lie.”

A user on Twitter writes: “Our story, however bitter, is a family dispute.” In this statement, an Iranian outside their homeland is not part of the family. Another responds to this user: “The father of the family has a heavy hand and beats his children at any excuse, or even assaults them. You advise them not to seek help from anyone, hoping the father will improve.”

However, preventing the leakage of accurate information about this “family dispute” has brought the narrow glass container to the brink of explosion.

Internet Shutdown and Its Consequences from the Perspective of Domestic Journalists

There is no shortage of journalists and reporters within Iran who are writing about the problems that the internet shutdown has caused and its consequences for news reporting and public trust in the media. If some groups believe that the internet shutdown can return credibility to domestic media, reading the views of another group proves the opposite.

Omid Tosha writes on Twitter: “Without free internet, it is as if we have all been imprisoned.” Mohammad Moassad, another journalist, writes on Twitter: “Without internet, metropolises have transformed into thousands of small crowded villages. When communication tools are cut off, the horizon of vision becomes just a few meters, and it no longer matters if you are a few kilometers away or thousands of kilometers away.” Afshin Amirshahi, another journalist, summarizes the results of “the internet shutdown and instructions on what to write and what not to write” like this: “Depriving newspapers and news agencies of their credibility and distrust of domestic newspapers.”

People Searching for New Ways of Communication

Domestic news agencies are active; they write about destruction, about “rioters” and about compensation paid by insurance, “everything is under control,” “the city is safe and sound.” In the “few-meter horizon” created by misinformation, what cannot be verified is this very “safety” of the city.

It is unclear how long and to what extent the Iranian government is determined to completely cut off millions of Iranians’ connection to the world, but the reality is that people who have flourished in the world of communications for decades cannot be permanently confined. A user writes, “My mother knew about proxies, and now she is learning to access the internet through SSH tunnels and so on.”

“I Thank Technology”

The internet is cut off and reconnected.

A tweet from Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, is circulating that read: “Thanks to technology, I was able to see and talk to my 40-year-old friend and Iran’s envoy to the United Nations, who is now in a hospital in New York a few hundred meters away.”