From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
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Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#2[deleted]
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#3Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].
Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [9], and China [9]
My understanding is that during the current 5 year plan in Iran, they are trying to fully transition the Iranian internet to the NIN, as all ".ir" domains are supposed to be hosted on the NIN.
If someone wants to find a techno-authoritarian state I'd say Iran is probably closer to that vision than most other countries, as a large portion of their leadership are Western-educated (Stanford, MIT, UPMC/Paris VI, Supélec, UNSW, etc) Computer Engineers and Computer Scientists by training (eg. Iran's VP did his PhD under Thomas Cover at Stanford [8] and Rouhani's Chief of Staff studied EE@SJSU). Even Iran's NSC and former IRGC head (who's daughter is a surgeon at Emory - so much for marg bar amreeka) was a CS major turned Kantian philosophy PhD.
[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/
[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa
[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...
[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...
[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545
[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...
[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/
[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home
[8] - https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/1011657
[9] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#4Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :)
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#5Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :) https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...
Similarly tangentially related - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#6Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly tangentially related - https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/iranian-offic...
What?! that's literal sniping
This conversation and thread is about the Iranian NIN. If you want to talk about Gaza, you can post that to HN and start the discussion there.
It is irrelevant with regards to conversations about the Iranian NIN and is essentially a form of whataboutism.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#8> Had authorities withdrawn IPv4 routes, as they did with IPv6, Iran would have become completely unreachable, as Egypt was in January 2011. By keeping IPv4 routes in circulation, Iranian authorities can selectively grant full internet access to specific users while denying it to the broader population.
As of late, we’ve seen a few measures like the restoration of transit from Rostelecom and the return of routes originated by IPM, as the country appears to be moving towards a partial restoration. At the time of this writing, the plan appears to be to operate the Iranian internet as a whitelisted network indefinitely.
I’d call that digital apartheid.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#9> Had authorities withdrawn IPv4 routes, as they did with IPv6, Iran would have become completely unreachable, as Egypt was in January 2011. By keeping IPv4 routes in circulation, Iranian authorities can selectively grant full internet access to specific users while denying it to the broader population. As of late, we’ve seen a few measures like the restoration of transit from Rostelecom and the return of routes orig…
That's pretty much their plan - to create an Internet-e-Paak or "Pure" Internet. This all started back during the Green Revolution.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What?! that's literal sniping
This conversation and thread is about the Iranian NIN. If you want to talk about Gaza, you can post that to HN and start the discussion there. It is irrelevant with regards to conversations about the Iranian NIN and is essentially a form of whataboutism.
That article I linked was about Tehran, first photo is of Tehran, though it might look like Gaza