Internet blackout and protests in Iran ^{CEFR B2}

The unrest began on 27 December 2025 with coordinated strikes in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and spread into demonstrations across more than 30 provinces. Iranian authorities imposed a total internet shutdown on 8 January 2026; NetBlocks confirmed a near‑complete collapse of mobile, fixed‑line and international services, and limited access began to return on 23 January.

As connectivity returned, videos, geolocated footage, forensic analysis and hospital records began to surface and support claims of mass casualties. The UN Human Rights Council described the violence as “unprecedented in its scope and brutality.” A TIME report, citing anonymous state officials, said the crackdown could have resulted in over 30,000 deaths. The US‑based NGO HRANA reported at least 41,800 arrests and possibly up to 50,000 across more than 400 cities, and said detainees were held in overcrowded facilities with heightened risks of torture, forced confessions and summary execution.

The blackout also reshaped who could speak for Iranians abroad. With people inside the country cut off, regime defenders and state‑aligned commentators framed international debate. Demonstrators criticised figures such as Trita Parsi (founder of NIAC and co‑founder of the Quincy Institute) and groups like the Iranian Canadian Congress. A state‑aligned programme, Dialogue, named Parsi while guests Foad Izadi and Bijan Abdolkarimi discussed building an “Iran lobby” in the United States; Izadi has been described as a frequent state media surrogate and Abdolkarimi has called the IRGC Iran’s “only hope.”

Reported narrative tactics followed a consistent playbook: question videos, demand high proof standards, dismiss eyewitnesses, recast protests as narrow economic grievances or blame foreign manipulation. When independent verification supported claims of mass casualties, some commentators shifted to blaming foreign agents or called the crackdown a necessary security operation, arguing the internet was shut to disrupt Western instigators. Foreign‑funded outlets and some diaspora networks also reframed the protests through a pro‑Pahlavi or pro‑Israel lens, a shift reported by Haaretz. The January blackout showed that control of visibility can determine which accounts reach global audiences and allowed competing external narratives to harden before survivors could speak.