Internet connectivity went down across Iran on Thursday amid nationwide protests, according to web monitoring companies.
“I think we’re almost completely disconnected from the outside world now,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher who works for the nonprofit group Miaan, told TechCrunch.
Doug Madory, director of internet analytics at Kentik, a company that monitors internet traffic around the world, agreed, telling TechCrunch that the internet in Iran was in a “near total shutdown” as of 11:30 a.m. on the US East Coast on Thursday or at 8:00 PM local time in Tehran.
Internet traffic tracking NetBlocksinternet infrastructure company Cloudflareand internet connection monitoring site IODIAall recorded sudden drops in connectivity across Iran at the same time.
“We continue to see a small amount of traffic, but the country is essentially completely offline,” David Belson, chief information officer at Cloudflare, told TechCrunch.
At the end of December, protests broke out in several Iranian cities, following the sharp drop in the value of the country’s currency, which it caused shortages of goods and dramatic price increases. Some shops in Tehran’s traditional bazaar have been closed for 11 days, according to the New York Times.
The Iranian government responded with a violent crackdown on the protesters.
The Iranian government, which maintains tight control over the country’s Internet access, is behind the blackout, according to Rashidi.
Iranian government representatives in the United States did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The Iranian Foreign Ministry website was down at the time of publication.
