(Bloomberg) — Iran is enduring its largest internet outage in history, activists say, raising fears that Tehran’s crackdown on protesters may persist despite assurances that it will ease penalties.
The internet shutdown lasted eight days, longer than the outage during the country’s 2019 demonstrations, global internet monitor Netblocks said on Friday.
The blackout continues even as protests subsided after a violent wave of crackdowns choked the flow of information coming out of the country and cut off Iranians from the rest of the world. Nearly 3,500 people have died and at least 20,000 have been arrested in demonstrations since late December, according to the Oslo-based Iranian Human Rights Group. Other estimates suggest the death toll may be significantly higher.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vowed on Wednesday not to execute protesters after US President Donald Trump sparked fears of a military strike by urging Iranians to continue to oppose the rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and saying “help is on the way”.
While the threat of military action remains, Trump on Friday toned down his rhetoric by thanking Iran’s leadership for the moratorium on executions.
“I greatly respect the fact that all the planned hangings that were supposed to take place yesterday (over 800 of them) have been canceled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” he said in a post on the social network.
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet service, which operates separately from the national telecommunications network, also agreed to waive subscription fees for Iranians after Trump called on the company to help restore communications. While Starlink is illegal in Iran, according to Iranian human rights activist Ahmad Ahmadian, there may be as many as 50,000 terminals in the country that have been smuggled on the black market. The service gave Iranians a small amount of bandwidth to share social media footage with the world.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that Trump continues to closely monitor the situation in Iran and will leave all options on the table. At least one US aircraft carrier and other US assets are moving to the region in the coming days and weeks to provide options should the US decide to strike, Fox News reported, citing military sources.
The likelihood of a strike will increase once the group of carriers arrives between late January and early February and will remain elevated until the first half of 2026, analysts at Eurasia Group said in a report.
“Iran cannot address the root causes of the protests,” which could reignite demonstrations and “give Trump a new pretext to threaten and deploy military action,” they said.
The country shut down internet access on January 8 in an attempt to quell protests sparked by the country’s currency crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the demonstrations and a brutal crackdown followed. Social media footage that emerged in Iran showed protesters shot and killed as authorities tried to intervene.
An internet blackout in 2019, following protests sparked by a sudden increase in fuel prices, marked the first time authorities effectively cut off the population from the outside world.
Iran’s foreign exchange shortage remains severe, which is likely to keep pressure on the currency and ensure that inflation – officially around 50% – remains elevated in the coming weeks and months. It was the rial crash that initially sparked the protests. Oil broadly held on for its biggest price drop since June as fears of an attack on OPEC’s fourth-largest producer eased.
Authorities in Iran have described the unrest as a plot backed by the US and Israel, and have accused their governments of arming and inciting terrorists to target security forces and civilians.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was considering tightening sanctions on Iran – already under tight restrictions from Western governments. The US on Thursday added a number of individuals and entities to an already extensive list of sanctions.
“They weaken the regime and sanctions help push for the end of this regime and change,” Von der Leyen said in Cyprus on Thursday.
–With assistance from Thomas Hall, John Bowker, Michelle Jamrisko and Iain Marlow.
(Update with Trump’s comments from paragraph five.)
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