Iran's Internet Shutdown Is Now One of the Longest Ever (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0180591046
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/15/2228257/irans-internet-shutdown-is-now-one-of-the-longest-ever
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/15/irans-internet-shutdown-is-now-one-of-its-longest-ever-as-protests-continue/
> As of this writing, Iranians have not been able to access the internet for more than 170 hours. The previous longest shutdowns in the country lasted around 163 hours in 2019, and 160 hours in 2025, according to Isik Mater, the director of research at NetBlocks, a web monitoring company that tracks internet disruptions.
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> Mater said that the current shutdown in Iran is the third longest on record, after the internet shutdown in Sudan in mid-2021 that lasted around 35 days, followed by the outage in Mauritania in July 2024, which lasted 22 days. "Iran's shutdowns remain among the most comprehensive and tightly enforced nationwide blackouts we've observed, particularly in terms of population affected," Mater told TechCrunch.
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> The exact ranking depends on how each organization measures a shutdown. Zach Rosson, a researcher who studies internet disruptions at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, told TechCrunch that according to its data, the ongoing shutdown in Iran is on a path to crack the [4]top 10 longest shutdowns in history .
Further reading: [5]Iran Shuts Down Musk's Starlink For First Time
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/08/1929218/iran-in-digital-blackout-as-tehran-throttles-mobile-internet-access
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/15/irans-internet-shutdown-is-now-one-of-its-longest-ever-as-protests-continue/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran+protest
[4] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mZoKkFiaRVocWJm_Kb7Jd8jE2fsFWr_7HJo1VJlzmuw/edit?gid=0#gid=0
[5] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/14/0224232/iran-shuts-down-musks-starlink-for-first-time
Bluff (Score:1)
Trump bluffed without having the will to follow through. I'm not saying he should follow through, I'm saying he shouldn't have bluffed.
Re: (Score:1)
Trump has plenty of will to follow thru once Hegseth, Miller, or Rubio determine who/what they could drop a bomb on Trump will gleefully give the order to let fly.
The challenge for the war department right now is to support an urban uprising with an air/missile campaign.
Re: (Score:3)
> Trump bluffed without having the will to follow through. I'm not saying he should follow through, I'm saying he shouldn't have bluffed.
he probably had to, to keep his zionist friends from ripping his guts out. and he's probably not bluffing who we may think he is, but it's still a show: fill the headlines with outrageous statements or put up spectacular fireworks and proclaim victory and obliteration knowing that it isn't going anywhere, but he tried, then on to the next thing: yemen, iran, venezuela, iran again ... it's starting to look like a modus operandi now. ofc in every case there are surely more subtle motives, actors and factors a
Re: (Score:2)
> Quickly znrt, tell us all how it's a good thing Iran has no internet.
tell me how desperate regular iranian citizens that hardly can buy food got their hands on tens of thousands of starlink terminals, under strict sanctions?
Re: (Score:2)
> Trump bluffed without having the will to follow through. I'm not saying he should follow through, I'm saying he shouldn't have bluffed.
We don't know if it's a bluff until the game is over. This isn't finished yet.
Trump just bought time for more assets to be put in place for a decisive result.
If Iran backs down. It's because Trump forced them to. Great optics for Trump, the only thing he really cares about.
If Iran escalates further. Well Trump gave them a chance for peace and they blew it. Good optics for Trump, the only thing he really cares about.
Re: (Score:2)
How in the world did Iran "escalate"? They didn't genuflect to the senile orangutan? They didn't accept Israel as their overlord? They don't acknowledge that the only allowed currency for international transactions is the Almighty Dollar? Tell me about these "escalations" which allow the violation of their sovereignty, I'm intrigued.
Crucial missing context - why? (Score:2)
Contrary to the summary, the mass protests are not really continuing at this point. The Iranian regime has killed anywhere from several thousand to several tens of thousands of protesters - open fire with machine guns into crowds, setting markets on fire and shooting people as they tried to escape, sniping from rooftops - and that's been ruthless enough that people are now afraid to go out in most places. The streets are generally deserted. (Even groups of two have been enough to get shot in some places.)
They have actual water shortages (Score:1)
Food too. That's where the revolution is coming from. You have people that are facing imminent starvation or just plain dehydration.
The world has been trying to goad Iran into a war for some time. Large parts of the Middle East are hoping that they can draw America in and have us exterminate everyone there for them. Given that we are literally talking about invading a NATO Nation that's on the table now.
I mean Germany put trigger troops into Greenland for Pete's sakes. I don't think there's anything
Re: They have actual water shortages (Score:1)
you are confused.
It was USA who sponsored terrorist attacks in Iran in the 1950s; we drew first blood.
Re: (Score:2)
> you are confused.
> It was USA who sponsored terrorist attacks in Iran in the 1950s; we drew first blood.
The CIA and MI6 definitely engineered the coup via a variety of the ususl methods - mostly for cold-war calculus anti-communist reasons but also for economic reasons (oil) - but the USA didn’t sponsor terrorist attacks unless you call the coup itself a “terrorist attack”, which is misleading.
Ironically, the west also, at least peripherally, helped install Khomeini - the NYT glazed him, France gave him asylum, the Carter administration engaged in secret contacts with Khomeini’s entour
Re: (Score:2)
>> you are confused.
>> It was USA who sponsored terrorist attacks in Iran in the 1950s; we drew first blood.
> The CIA and MI6 definitely engineered the coup via a variety of the ususl methods - mostly for cold-war calculus anti-communist reasons but also for economic reasons (oil) - but the USA didn’t sponsor terrorist attacks unless you call the coup itself a “terrorist attack”, which is misleading.
> Ironically, the west also, at least peripherally, helped install Khomeini - the NYT glazed him, France gave him asylum, the Carter administration engaged in secret contacts with Khomeini’s entourage to smooth the nascent coup, and prominent leftists like Foucault went to Iran to meet his socialist supporters. (Foucault, by the way, became a towering hero in the left’s Critical Theory canon, although he himself wasn’t a fan of CT.)
> Of course Khomeini and more so his immediate successor Khamenei had these socialists rounded up, but such co-opting has been the inevitable fate of virtually every major socialist revolutionary movement. Socialist revolutionaries routinely reject classical liberalism (decentralized governance, blind justice, etc) so they’re pretty easily conscripted by folks that reject the same.
> This goes to show meddling is just an overall bad idea.
Taking this a step further, there’s an ongoing double irony.
First, many of the recent mass protests in Iran call for reinstatement of the deposed shah’s son - largely because they’re tired of the Khamenei government, including its domestic and foreign policy as well its brutal nature - but also because the shah’s son is a bookish fan of secular classical liberal principles.
Second, those very same secular classical liberal principles may explain a bit of the uncharacteristic relative
Re: (Score:1)
That is about the dumbest thing I have read from you in a while, which is saying something. Not many player in the middle east want armed conflict with Iran happening or for Iran to slip into failed state status.
Not even Israel, Iran's mortal enemy want that. Even they are pumping the breaks. Why because that is a lot of weapons military hardware and bettered trained fighting men who would suddenly seeking power or simply selling the stuff to whoever to enrich themselves. It is mixture of Islamic zealots
Re:They have actual water shortages (Score:4, Insightful)
> Not even Israel, Iran's mortal enemy want that.
i disagree here, iran descending into chaos like syria is exactly what israel wants if it can't get the better option: iran as a remote controlled puppet state, which seems highly unlikely. a fragmented failed state is manageable. the last thing they want is a stable, unified, sovereign iran they can't control. that's exactly why they did to syria what they did, iran is just the final boss.
and when i say israel i mean israel and some shady powers mostly in the uk and the us. the proverbial colonialist gang.
> Domestically the LAST thing Trump is going to do is draft anyone to invade a foreign country. He likes missiles and bombs because domestically it makes America seem muscular to his base without him having to stand next to plane unloading the bodies of their children.
this sounds about right, and is consistent with his actions so far.
> Nope if Trump drafts anyone it will be to invade Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and perhaps NYC.
that would not be consistent. a civil war in the us is a possibility but it would be a huge setback. geopolitically that's suicide. he might want to hold on to power but he will surely try other means.
Re: (Score:2)
> i disagree here, iran descending into chaos like syria is exactly what israel wants if it can't get the better option: iran as a remote controlled puppet state, which seems highly unlikely. a fragmented failed state is manageable. the last thing they want is a stable, unified, sovereign iran they can't control. that's exactly why they did to syria what they did, iran is just the final boss.
> and when i say israel i mean israel and some shady powers mostly in the uk and the us. the proverbial colonialist gang.
You have no concept of the region at all. Iran is not Syria. They aren't even Arab. And 250k people of Iranian descent live in Israel now, which is a sizable portion of a country with only 9 million people altogether. The people of Iran and the people of Israel are friendly, to the point that you often see Israeli flags and the old Iranian lion and sun flag displayed together at ex-pat events.
If Israel wanted chaos in Iran they could certainly have achieved that. They didn't have any problem at all taking
Re:They have actual water shortages (Score:4, Interesting)
> The last thing the stable states in the region UAE, Saudis, Kuwait, Oman, Turky want is Iran turning into a Iraq, Syria like mess.
The last thing they want is a stable prosperous wealthy Iran.
An unstable mess they can point to and blame their internal problems on. Excuse their own "badness"
None of them want a country better than them sucking up all the tourist dollars and business deals in the region.
Re: (Score:2)
> The last thing they want is a stable prosperous wealthy Iran.
> An unstable mess they can point to and blame their internal problems on. Excuse their own "badness"
> None of them want a country better than them sucking up all the tourist dollars and business deals in the region.
True, but I think what they really, really don't want is free flowing Iranian oil. The "evil regime that gets heavy sanctions" status quo is very agreeable to them because it appreciates the value of their one major asset.
Re: (Score:1)
The entire middle east needs to be terminated so we can stop having all these stupid religious wars. Literally fucking wars over fairy tales.