By Kayhan Life Staff / Reuters
LONDON/DUBAI, Jan. 9, 2026 (Reuters) — Iran’s internet shutdown has become “essentially near-total,” a monitoring group said on Friday, as authorities moved to curb expanding anti-government protests that have flared across multiple cities.
Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, said Iran’s connectivity typically drops to a “1% to 3% baseline” when the government switches off the internet, leaving ordinary citizens with little practical access to international services. He said the remaining connectivity may be used by the authorities to monitor developments or publish information they want disseminated outside the country.
“With the full shield activated, it’s not a matter of just loading up some software,” Toker said, adding that Iran’s “gateway firewall is comprehensive enough” that common circumvention tools such as VPNs are largely ineffective during a full shutdown.
NetBlocks said it detected disruptions as early as Jan. 2, as protests intensified, but that the blackout escalated sharply on Jan. 8. The group tracked initial regional shutdowns in provinces, followed by disruptions in Tehran, and said that by about 4:30 p.m. the outage had effectively become nationwide, impacting multiple providers and ultimately leaving the country largely out of touch with the outside world.
Toker said Iranians have limited options to reconnect, primarily through physical proximity to borders — accessing international Wi-Fi or connecting across borders to foreign GSM networks — which is only feasible for a small subset of the population. Satellite internet remains another pathway, including Starlink, which he said has been activated, but access is constrained because the required terminals are considered contraband by Iranian authorities and are not widely available.
Khamenei Lashes Out at Trump, Threatens Iranians as the Whole Country Goes Dark Online
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after authorities blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos showed buildings and vehicles ablaze in protests in several cities. The blackout sharply reduced the flow of information from inside the country, and Reuters reporters said phone calls into Iran from abroad were not getting through.
At least 17 flights between Dubai and Iranian cities scheduled for Friday were cancelled, according to Dubai Airport’s website.
In a televised address, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed not to back down, accusing demonstrators of acting on behalf of émigré opposition groups and the United States. Rights groups reported that police fired on protesters in the south.
The protests began late last month with shopkeepers and bazaar merchants demonstrating over inflation and the plunging rial, but later spread to universities and provincial cities, with young men clashing with security forces. While the unrest has not yet mobilized society on the scale of past nationwide demonstrations, dozens of deaths have been reported, and the authorities are facing growing pressure amid a deteriorating economy and the aftershocks of last year’s war with Israel and the United States.
