For nearly three months this year, most people in Iran had no functioning connection to the global internet. The blackout began in February, as the United States and Israel launched military strikes against the country, leaving Iranians unable to reach relatives, check which neighborhoods were under threat, or find emergency medical information while explosions sounded overhead. It was the longest shutdown of its kind recorded anywhere in the world, and it has placed Iran among the most hostile environments for internet freedom in Freedom House's newly released Freedom on the Net index.
A Blackout as Policy, Not Accident
What happened in Iran was not a technical failure. It was a deliberate act of state control, layered on top of years of infrastructure planning designed to give the government a kill switch over the national network. The shutdown accompanied a broader campaign to restructure how Iranians connect to the internet altogether, pushing them away from global platforms and toward services the state can monitor and shape at will. Russia is pursuing a strikingly similar strategy, suggesting that digital isolation has become a shared tool among governments determined to insulate their populations from outside information.
Chasing China's Model, Without China's Head Start
Both Tehran and Moscow appear to be working toward something resembling China's Great Firewall, the dense censorship apparatus that filters and blocks content at the network level. China had the advantage of building that system into its infrastructure from the beginning. Iran and Russia instead must retrofit existing networks, which means relying more heavily on legal coercion, price manipulation, and public pressure to herd users onto state-approved platforms.
In Russia, authorities have throttled WhatsApp and Telegram while promoting Max, a messaging app built by a government-friendly company and reportedly equipped with extensive surveillance capabilities. Iran, meanwhile, criminalized "unauthorized" VPN use in 2024, steering citizens toward state-licensed VPN providers that make censorship and monitoring far easier to enforce. During the recent conflict, the cost of both state-approved and black-market VPN access reportedly surged, placing secure connectivity out of reach for many ordinary Iranians.
Why VPNs and Open Platforms Still Matter
Commercial VPNs work by routing internet traffic through encrypted tunnels, masking a user's location and shielding activity from local network operators. That makes them a direct threat to censorship regimes, which is precisely why Iran and Russia have moved to restrict independent VPN services rather than ban the technology outright. Global social platforms, for all their flaws, offer something state-aligned alternatives do not: a connection to information and audiences beyond national borders, and a venue where censorship decisions can be publicly challenged.
Russia's September 2025 "register of socially significant services" made this logic explicit. The list determines which platforms internet providers must keep accessible even during shutdowns, and it favors state media and domestic apps like VK and Max, effectively guaranteeing continuity for government-aligned services while everything else goes dark.
What Comes Next
Satellite internet and direct-to-cell technology offer potential ways around nationwide shutdowns, though Iran has already responded by criminalizing unlicensed satellite equipment, with penalties reaching two years in prison. Decentralized mesh networks and circumvention tools designed to disguise VPN traffic as ordinary web activity remain important, if imperfect, countermeasures. In the United States, the Open Technology Fund has long supported open-source anti-censorship software used in closed societies, including Iran, Russia, and China. Sustaining and expanding that kind of investment may be one of the more practical ways democracies can help ordinary people stay connected when their own governments work to cut them off.