@markpash Most of our sources are inside Iran, so we redact all individual social media users by default regardless of location. It's a protective measure. On the citation: the source for that section was your tweets directly, not the article.
Iran’s internet blackout has a structural gap. The state blocked most of the international internet. It left Google’s infrastructure accessible. Within weeks, the Iranian technical community had built an entire circumvention ecosystem out of that exemption, on GitHub, distributed free.
@markpash@AminSabeti Thanks for the note. @mahsanet's analysis is cited and linked in the full piece; it's one of our primary sources. The thread format doesn't carry footnotes, but the article does. MahsaNet also shared our report on their own account, which we appreciated.
When Iran's internet came back on May 26, Cloudflare's data showed something unexpected: Iranian users were appearing to the global internet as Azerbaijani.
Not a glitch. Not a VPN. Infrastructure.
digimpactlab.substack.com/p/traffic-laun…
The Cloudflare Radar spike is timestamped to May 26, the exact day Iran's internet was partially restored.
It doesn't look like infrastructure assembled after the restoration. It looks like infrastructure waiting to be switched on.
Full analysis:
digimpactlab.substack.com/p/traffic-laun…
This isn't improvised. Iran's state backbone operator (TIC) signed a formal strategic agreement with Delta Telecom CEO Ramazan Valiyev in April 2025. The routing is consistent across ISPs because it happens at the backbone level.
The government did not liberalize. It abandoned a monetization scheme (Internet Pro) that failed to achieve public adoption, restored the filternet that existed before January 8, and claimed credit for the restoration. The laws and infrastructure that made 88 days possible are unchanged.
Full analysis: digimpactlab.substack.com/p/iran-digital…
Data centers tell the same story. An operator who tested Pishgaman, Afranet, and Sefroyek the day after restoration: “Most data centers still have no connectivity… Our servers still have no ping to foreign servers.” Infrastructure for circumvention remains under pressure by design.
Iran’s internet is back. Sort of. After 88 days of near-total blackout, Cloudflare Radar confirmed traffic restored to 40% of pre-shutdown levels on May 26, with 91.6% of that concentrated in Tehran. Provinces outside the capital remain near blackout conditions. A thread.
Iran may be moving beyond temporary internet blackouts toward something more durable: a Chinese-style system of digital control.
iranintl.com/en/202605264373
The Internet Filtering Committee updates its filters. The developers release a new version. Each iteration: an institution with significant resources and enforcement power vs. individuals working in their spare time, in public, for free.
Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/digimpactl…
Iran has over 70 million internet users. The vast majority have no technical background and no means to pay for commercial access. A handful of engineers, in public repositories, are maintaining the primary non-commercial pathway to the open internet for a country the size of France and Germany combined.
171 Followers 905 Followingوطن داستان کسانیست که ترس را میترسانند و مرگ را به کام مرگ میکشند. ما کسانی هستیم که قبل از آنکه مرگ به سراغمان بیاید، برای وطن
میمیریم. ☼𓃬
0505
1K Followers 2K FollowingHuman Rights @Wikimedia / Co-founder of @accessnow / Founder @AzadiArchive / Former #humanrights professor @CEU
"Joy is not made to be a crumb" -Mary Oliver
13K Followers 3K FollowingFeaturing @FDD’s analysis on #Iran’s global threat network, nuclear & missile programs, politics, economy, human rights, sanctions, Iran-backed terror & more.
105 Followers 242 FollowingResearcher| Focus on Iran & Pakistan| COI| RT's and links are not endorsements| Views are my own
Quality news about Iran & Pakistan