More than two months into the longest internet shutdown in Iran's documented history, the country has fractured along a new fault line: those who can access the global internet and those who cannot. The blackout, which began on January 8 amid anti-government protests and intensified after strikes by the United States and Israel on February 28, has cost Iranians an estimated $1.8 billion in economic losses. It has also given rise to a quietly explosive controversy over a privileged access program called Internet Pro - one that has drawn condemnation from unions, professional associations, reformists, and even ministers within the government itself.
A System Built on Exclusion
Iran has a long record of using internet shutdowns as a tool of political control. Authorities have repeatedly restricted or severed access to the global internet during periods of civil unrest, typically maintaining domestic infrastructure - local banking, government portals - while cutting off outside communication. What is different this time is both the duration, which now exceeds any previous shutdown, and the emergence of Internet Pro, a tiered access program launched in February through the Mobile Communications Company of Iran, a company owned by a consortium with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Internet Pro operates through what appears to be telecom-level whitelisting. Certain SIM cards and accounts are exempted from the country's filtering systems, effectively routing pre-approved users through less restricted gateways. Users must pass a verification process and demonstrate a business, academic, or scientific role. The program provides access to the full global internet - exactly what was available to every Iranian before the current blackout began. The pricing is steep by domestic standards: a one-year, 50-gigabyte package carries an activation fee of around 2.8 million tomans, plus roughly 40,000 tomans per additional gigabyte. Ordinary restricted internet, by contrast, costs 8,000 tomans per gigabyte.
For those outside the program, the only route to international platforms is the black market for VPN services - tools that encrypt traffic and mask a user's location. The price of those services has surged. "Imagine dealing with unemployment and crazy inflation, and somehow managing to scrape together 500,000 or a million tomans, only to spend it on a couple of gigabytes of VPN just so you can get on X or other platforms, check the news, and have a voice," said Faraz, a 38-year-old resident of Tehran, where average monthly wages range between 20 million and 35 million tomans. "And then you see people with unrestricted access acting like everything is normal - it honestly feels like a punch to the gut."
The Political Fracture Behind the Firewall
The controversy over Internet Pro has exposed genuine divisions at the highest levels of the Iranian state. The program was approved by the Supreme National Security Council - a body dominated by hardliners and security apparatus figures - but the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has publicly declared its opposition to the tiered system. Pezeshkian's office stated last month that restrictions on ordinary citizens' internet access were unfair and that responsible agencies had failed to justify the arrangement. Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi went further, asserting that high-quality internet access is every Iranian's right and that "tiered internet or a whitelist system has no validity." A senior adviser to Hashemi acknowledged that Internet Pro, originally conceived to help businesses maintain service continuity during crises, "has now been misused."
Those defending the policy come largely from hardline quarters, including Mohammad Amin Aghamiri, who oversees the authority governing cyberspace control and who was sanctioned by both the United States and the United Kingdom in 2023 for human rights abuses connected to the crackdown on protests. The stated rationale - preventing cyberattacks on critical infrastructure - has satisfied few. Public anger intensified further when Internet Pro SIM cards, meant only for verified professionals, began appearing on the black market, prompting the head of the judiciary to call on prosecutors to address what he described as "discriminatory and corrupt" access.
The Cost, Human and Economic
The material damage from the shutdown is substantial and documented from multiple directions. Human Rights Activists in Iran, an organization based outside the country, estimates economic losses at approximately $1.8 billion over the two-month period - a figure that aligns with estimates from Iran's own Chamber of Commerce. The newspaper Ettela'at described the situation as "dire and complicated," noting that virtual businesses that depended on the open internet for their livelihoods have been among the hardest hit.
The damage is also psychological. Iran's Psychiatric Association issued a formal warning last week that unequal access patterns "may lead to increased psychological stress, feelings of being overlooked or marginalized, and a decline in public trust." Several major labor organizations - including a nurses' union representing some 300,000 members, as well as various lawyers' groups - have rejected Internet Pro in solidarity with workers who lack access. The independent publication Khabar Online characterized the outcome plainly: Iranian society has been divided into "a digital elite who enjoy fast, unfiltered channels for business, education, and communication, and digital subjects who are confined within heavy filtering, restricted speeds, and the high costs of the black-market VPN economy."
A small number of Starlink satellite receivers have been smuggled into the country, offering another route around the restrictions. But owning such a device is illegal in Iran and can result in arrest and charges tied to national security, making it an option only for those willing to accept extraordinary personal risk.
What This Signals About Internet Control as Governance
Iran's situation represents an accelerating trend in authoritarian information management: the use of graduated internet access as a mechanism of political stratification, not merely censorship. Where earlier shutdown models were blunt instruments - cut access, restore access - Internet Pro introduces something more structurally durable. It formalizes a class system around digital rights, rewarding institutional loyalty and professional status while making ordinary connectivity a scarce and expensive commodity for everyone else.
As Mohammad-Hamid Shahrivar, a lawyer, told the Shargh news outlet: "The main issue is no longer just filtering or shutdowns; rather, it is the redefinition of the right to access the internet." That redefinition, if it holds, would mark a significant shift in how coercive states approach digital control - less about the temporary removal of access and more about its permanent reallocation. At a moment when Iran's government is projecting public unity in the face of external pressure, the argument over who can go online is producing one of the most visible and broadly felt internal disputes the country has seen in years.
