The Islamic Republic is breaking many negative records in the field of digital repression. Iranians, during perhaps one of the most turbulent periods in their history — from the start of the 12-day war to the Dey protests and after that the 40-day war, which it is still not clear has completely ended or not — have spent more than one hundred days in total without internet. The fundamental difference in the latest period of internet shutdown is the prominent presence of tiered internet in the guise of a new plan called “Pro Internet.” This project, however, is not the product of today or yesterday in the regime’s decision-making rooms, but the endpoint of a winding path the regime traveled to reach it. Each of the turning points of the Dey 1396 protests, the Aban 1398 gasoline price protests, the 1401 protests, and finally the Dey 1404 protests brought lessons for the regime’s security apparatuses, whose final output was ultimately the Pro Internet version. Below, we will examine what happened for “Pro Internet” to emerge from the regime’s magic box.

Dey 1396: Filtering Telegram Is Enough

Here, it is necessary to explain why Dey 1396 has been chosen as the starting point of the path whose endpoint is assumed to be “Pro Internet.” One can claim that the Green Movement protests were the first period in which the regime became seriously afraid of the internet’s organizing power and began filtering Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. From the 1388 protests to the Dey 1396 protests, however, key changes occurred in people’s access to the internet, taking the government’s confrontation with it to another level. During the Green Movement, there was almost no sign of mobile internet among the country’s communication technologies. High-speed internet was limited to fixed ADSL technology, offered with a speed limit of 128 kilobits per second, and in addition, social networks had not gained the power they had by 1396.

At the time of the Dey 1396 protests, however, the previous limitation on fixed internet had been lifted, and third- and fourth-generation communication technologies had, for several years, found their place in users’ mobile phones. At that time, Telegram had reached such a position among Iranians that it met their various needs, including online shopping, personal communications, reading news, entertainment, and many other things.

All of this led the government to filter Telegram on 10 Dey 1396, and a few days after the protests ended, it moved to reopen it. This reopening, however, did not last long. A few months later, in Ordibehesht 1397, Telegram was filtered by order of a judge, and it remains filtered. About a year and a half later, however, something happened that filtering one or several social networks could no longer cope with.

Aban 1398: The Fire of Gasoline Is Not Easily Extinguished

It is true that the Dey 1396 protests began only a few months after the people’s 24-million vote for “Hassan Rouhani” in Ordibehesht 1396, but their scope was limited compared with many protests after the revolution. In addition, some government officials considered incitement by forces affiliated with “Ahmad Alamolhoda” to be the main factor behind their start. The Aban 1398 protests, however, were different in every respect.

In Aban 1398, one year after “Donald Trump” withdrew from the JCPOA, the effects of this controversial decision had clearly shown themselves in the economy. Oil revenues had declined, the exchange rate was surging after several years of stability, and the accumulation of dissatisfaction needed only a 200-percent increase in the gasoline price to ignite.

The Supreme National Security Council completely and nationwide cut off the internet in Iran for about 10 days in order to carry out the killing of protesters under conditions in which Iran was entirely cut off from the world. Later, Reuters, citing informed sources inside the government, reported that about 1,500 people were killed in these protests. The unprecedented level of repression was made possible through the nationwide internet shutdown. Here, the regime tested this tool for the first time, but in the next round of protests, it preferred to set aside this costly path — meaning a nationwide and complete internet shutdown.

The 1401 Protests: Filtering and Severe Disruption Instead of Complete Shutdown

The stain of the Aban internet shutdown and the widespread killing of protesters remained on the regime’s forehead from Aban 1398 to Shahrivar 1401. For this reason, this time the strategy shifted from complete shutdown to intermittent shutdowns, filtering, and widespread disruption. After Telegram was filtered in Ordibehesht 1397, WhatsApp gradually became more popular. Instagram was also undergoing explosive growth in Iran and the world at the same time and, by 1401, had reached a position similar to Telegram in 1396 and even beyond it. For this reason, the government, in its first step and only five days after the death of Mahsa Amini, filtered these two popular platforms but did not completely cut off the internet. Alongside the blocking of these two, the internet was cut off at certain hours of the day and in the geographic areas where protesters were gathering. Also, during the hours when the internet was not cut off, widespread and deliberate disruption was imposed on the internet, seriously hindering access to VPNs.

But the flames of the protests were not so easily extinguished. The protests continued intermittently for three months after Mahsa Amini’s death, and the effects of the government’s new digital repression strategy stretched on for the same duration. The filtering of Instagram and WhatsApp, which was not supposed to be lifted, drove online businesses into the depths of collapse at least until the end of 1401, and widespread internet disruptions also caused serious damage to players in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, even quasi-state players. This time, the regime did not choose the costly version of nationwide and complete shutdown, but the costs still increased. The new version neither led to a rapid and complete suppression of the protests nor kept the economy safe from damage.

The 12-Day War: Disruption Is Not Enough

In the very first hours of Israel’s attack on Iran in Khordad 1404, several of the Islamic Republic’s highest-ranking military commanders, including the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the chief of staff of the armed forces, were killed. This sudden shock caused the Supreme National Security Council to try the option of internet disruption during the first three days.

After three days, however, the Supreme National Security Council did not consider widespread disruption enough and cut off the internet. This time, three years after the filtering of Instagram and WhatsApp and the surge in VPN use that followed it, methods of circumventing filtering had advanced so much that access could not be completely cut off as in Aban 1398. Therefore, a very limited set of VPNs remained accessible, but so limited that the overall situation can be described as an internet shutdown. The war lasted only 12 days, but the next crisis was not far away.

Dey Protests: Cut It Off and Kill

The regime’s performance in the protests of 18 and 19 Dey 1404 can be seen as a sign of a kind of lesson-learning from the 1401 protests. In the Dey protests, according to the highest estimates, the repression apparatus killed around 600 protesters, and as mentioned, in the field of digital repression, it did not resort to a complete shutdown. In Dey 1404, however, both of these changed.

This time, massacre and maximum communications shutdown were placed on the agenda. Bazaaris’ protests had begun sporadically on 7 Dey. On one side, people had three years of accumulated dissatisfaction since the previous protests; on the other side, the government, frightened by internal and external existential threats, was waiting for the protests to escalate. This finally happened on 18 Dey 1404. On that day, millions of protesting citizens across Iran took to the streets and were suppressed in an unprecedented way. Only about one hour after the start of the 18 Dey protests, the internet was cut off nationwide. This was not the only part of digital repression; this time, text messaging and phone calls were also taken out of reach to make the killing easier for the government.

In its report, “HRANA” identified the identities of more than 7,000 of those killed. This was the most severe repression, the major part of which was carried out in only two days, 18 and 19 Dey. Fearing that the fire of protests would be reignited, the government kept the internet closed until the first week of Bahman and then reopened it in a more limited and more disrupted way than before 18 Dey. This time, 20 days of internet shutdown had pressed its foot on the throat of the economy, especially online businesses. The regime had achieved its main goal, meaning the suppression of protests, but some knew that the next security crisis was not far away, so a new solution had to be sought: “Pro Internet.”

The 40-Day War: Preserving the Regime and the Operators’ Pockets

About a week before the start of the war, Iranian media reported on a plan called “Pro Internet,” initiated by the operator “Hamrah-e Aval,” owned by the Telecommunications Company, with joint shareholding by the IRGC Cooperative Foundation and the Executive Headquarters of Imam’s Directive. The information initially released showed that this plan had been designed specifically for businesses that need internet access. It also seemed that the identity verification and eligibility standards for recipients were relatively strict, but this trend did not continue.

The internet had been cut off from the first hour of the war on 9 Esfand 1404. From that time, a tiny portion of VPNs were accessible at astronomical prices, which many users could not and cannot afford. Now it was Pro Internet’s turn to show itself. After about two weeks, businesses received text messages for connection to Pro Internet, but at some point, the circle of recipients became much wider. At the time of writing these lines, eleven weeks after the internet shutdown in Iran, many guilds and institutions, and even people who do not fit into any of these categories, such as housewives, have received text messages offering Pro Internet. As the evidence suggests, the quasi-state operator Hamrah-e Aval, led by CEO “Mehdi Akhavan Bahabadi,” the son-in-law of “Hassan Ghafourifard” — a senior member of the Islamic Coalition Party who died in 1401 — is the main designer of this project.

“Ali Gholhaki,” who is introduced in Iranian media as a principlist activist and clearly has special access to one of the security institutions, recently exposed this operator’s role in the project without naming Hamrah-e Aval. He described the plan as “money-based” and wrote that Pro Internet was formed at the proposal of “the CEO of an operator to the main working group of a high-level supreme council.” According to Gholhaki, this operator has sent more than 4 million text messages to its users and activated more than 450,000 Pro SIM cards. This is while the other quasi-state operator, “Irancell,” has only managed to activate 40,000 Pro SIM card subscriptions.

While evidence and indications suggest that Islamic Republic officials have no intention of reopening the internet, Pro Internet text messages are being sent one after another to many users. The continuation of these two issues shows that the Islamic Republic government is seeking, by abusing wartime conditions, to bury the internet as it existed before 18 Dey and, simultaneously with the death of the internet, to design a profitable model with an approximately sevenfold price increase for the quasi-state players in this field, so that both their economic interests are secured and the damage of internet shutdown to other parts of the economy is reduced.

Where Does the Regime’s Security Concern Fit Into the Story?

As Ali Gholhaki has said, this model is supposed to offer one million Pro Internet subscriptions to the market in the first phase and then be opened to all people in the next phase. Regardless of the accuracy and precision of the information he has provided, the current trend of allocating Pro Internet confirms this plan. So how is it possible both to offer free and unfiltered internet to all people and to resolve the regime’s historical security concern about the internet, which has now reached its peak?

The answer is simple and is summed up in the price of 40,000 tomans per gigabyte for Pro Internet. This plan has, potentially, already been offered to a significant portion of citizens, but its roughly sevenfold gap compared with the regular tariff has made it not worth it in the eyes of many citizens. Therefore, offering Pro Internet at an astronomical price means the general public will not have access to free internet, and in this respect, the government’s fear of the repetition of protests similar to Dey 1404 is somewhat reduced. In addition, the income of the monopoly operators offering the internet is kept out of the danger zone. Pro Internet’s answer to this equation is exactly what the regime has reached after several rounds of trial and error. With Pro Internet, it is possible both to get rid of the internet as a nationwide network that organizes protesters and to turn the losses caused by internet shutdown into a profitable project.