Iran boosts restrictions on internet amid protests
Despite its importance to the economy, Telegram is blocked in Iran and will open once the company removes content that authorities say advocates violence.
In his first comments since protests erupted in Iran a week ago, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, Iran’s prosecutor general, discussed the role of social media in the unrest in the country and called for a national internet.
Montazeri, who was speaking in Qom, the religious center of Iran, addressed the inability of the country’s officials and seminaries to control the social media narrative. “If the seminaries do not get involved in this discussion, others will take this ground for themselves,” he said. He added that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that social media targets Islamic values and norms and has called for a national internet.
The idea of creating a national internet began under the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration with the support of the country’s leaders and security establishment. Storing all of the country’s data on domestic servers would give authorities more control and access to online content. However, the project has so far been little more than a money pit.
In response to the 2009 elections, Iran blocked access to social media websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, though many Iranians are still able to circumvent the blocks on those sites. With the latest round of protests, Iran has blocked Telegram, by far the country’s most popular social media site with some estimates at 40 million users, which would constitute half of the total population.
