Between the current blackout that began on February 28, when Israel and the United States attacked the country, and the previous internet shutdown implemented after widespread protests in January, Iran’s more than 90 million citizens have been without internet for the overwhelming majority of 2026. The reconnection appears to have been ordered by Iranian government officials – but it may only be temporary.
Although some Iranian networks appeared to be connecting to the global internet on Tuesday, researchers cautioned that the level of access was well below even the partial restoration that Tehran had allowed in late January and throughout February – and well below Iran’s typical baseline of global internet connectivity through December 2025. Internet monitoring experts from Kentik, Netblocks and Cloudflare began documenting a partial restoration of connectivity in Iran at noon local time on Tuesday.
“We do see some traffic coming from Iran,” says Amir Rashidi, a cybersecurity expert at the Internet freedom organization Mian Group. “Some providers are back online, but it’s still too early to say what exactly will happen. After the January protests, some providers reconnected, but about 50 percent of the country’s traffic remains blocked.”
“We’re not seeing a lot of change for mobile networks,” says Doug Madory, director of Internet analytics at Kentik. Instead, he says, some fixed-line providers are restoring their services, with the Telecommunications Company of Iran’s fiber-optic service around Tehran showing “the biggest gains.”
In early January, the Iranian regime completely shut down internet connectivity as the state cracked down on thousands of protesters who took to the streets demanding improved economic conditions in the country. The government again cut off connectivity completely in late February as the United States and Israel went to war in Iran – leaving millions of Iranians unable to contact their families, damaging the local economy, and blocking news and video footage about the war from getting in and out of the country. The limited reconnection of internet services on Tuesday came as the US government continues talks with Iran for a permanent end to the war.
Over the past decade, the Iranian regime has launched a massive project to control connectivity and censor content in the country, as well as build a national intranet to essentially replace the global Internet. This includes home-grown, surveillance-heavy technologies such as search engines, messaging apps and ride-hailing platforms. However, in practice, digital mechanisms of governance are often used as brute-force tools rather than precision instruments for control. It is unclear whether this is a result of technological limitations, political instability, or both.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council appears to have ordered the current internet shutdown in late February as the war with the US began. A separate group formed by current Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian – known as the Special Headquarters to Organize and Control the Country’s Cyberspace – reportedly ordered connectivity restoration on Monday, although the move faced a legal challenge in Iran’s High Court. Nevertheless, the Iranian Communications Minister said that the reconnection would be carried forward in accordance with the presidential order and that the process of restoring connectivity within 24 hours was underway.
“What we are seeing right now is an increase in traffic from Iran, but we need to wait and see the outcome of the power struggle,” says Mian Group’s Rashidi. “Given Iran’s political culture, challenging the president’s order in court was a form of insult to Pageskian. So we must wait and see how this power struggle plays out.”
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