IRSA at UCF

On January 8, 2026, the lights stayed on but the internet went out. Most of our families called us from landlines that night. Some couldn’t call at all. The official statement, when it eventually came, was about "security threats" and "foreign actors." The unofficial reality, on the ground, was a country going dark in the middle of the biggest wave of street protests since 2022.

It is now May 22, 2026 — day 135 of an internet blackout that has become the longest on record. This piece is not breaking news. It’s the opposite: a careful summary of what we actually know now, four months in, written for people in the diaspora who are tired of contradictory updates and want one place to stand.

The shape of the blackout, four months in

In a typical national internet shutdown — Egypt 2011, Sudan 2019, Myanmar 2021 — the question is binary: is the country online or offline? Iran in 2026 has invented a more sophisticated answer. It is both.

For most ordinary Iranians, the connection looks like this:

Mobile internet is degraded to the point of uselessness — usable for the regime’s own messaging apps (Soroush, Bale), broken for everything else.
Home broadband works intermittently. International routes are throttled or blocked. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram, and most VPN endpoints are unreachable.
Government services and select state media remain online and fast — by design.
Banks, ridesharing apps, and food delivery work most of the time, because shutting them off would collapse the economy faster than the protests would.

Cloudflare’s Q1 2026 disruption report documented two nationwide shutdowns in the first three months alone. The current blackout has, according to CBC reporting, already cost the Iranian economy an estimated $250 million per day in direct losses, and as much as $3 billion per day when you fold in the indirect damage to banks and traditional businesses.

Two tiers, by design: meet "Internet Pro"

In February, the regime introduced something it called "Internet Pro" — sold through the Mobile Communications Company of Iran (MCI). On the surface, it looks like a VPN. In reality, it is something more troubling.

As CNN reported earlier this month, Internet Pro routes pre-approved users through less restricted gateways — but unlike a real VPN, it does not encrypt traffic. The government still sees every site you visit, every message you send. You pay for the privilege of being surveilled with slightly better bandwidth.

Who qualifies? Officially, "businesses." In practice: people the state has reason to keep online. Importers. Industrial buyers. Foreign-currency earners. A handful of journalists who play ball. The opposition, the artists, the students — the people most of our families are — are not on the list.

My aunt has had Internet Pro for six weeks. My cousin, two streets away, has not. The only difference is that my aunt’s shop pays import taxes the state wants to see continue.

What the shutdown is actually for

It is tempting to read a blackout as a technical event. It is not. Human Rights Watch’s March 2026 analysis is unambiguous on this point: the shutdown is a tool. Three uses, in roughly this order:

Suppress documentation of crackdowns. Videos of beatings, arrests, and shootings in the streets cannot leave the country if nothing can leave the country.
Break protest coordination. Without messaging apps, organizers cannot call for marches, share locations, or warn each other about checkpoints.
Create a controlled information environment. If state TV is the only voice you can hear, state TV becomes the truth — at least for the people who don’t have a relative abroad with the energy to translate back what’s actually happening.

What is leaking out anyway

Some things still get through. We see them, in fragments, here in Orlando: a thirty-second clip uploaded at 4 a.m. when a brief signal window opens, a voice memo that takes two days to transit, a tweet from someone’s cousin in Vienna translating what an aunt in Mashhad just typed.

These fragments are what Iran Watch — the small editorial sub-desk inside IRSA — tries to preserve. Not breaking news, but the record. So that when the blackout eventually ends, and the regime tries to declare that things were calm and nothing happened, there is something we can hand to a reporter that says: here is what was happening on the days you weren’t allowed to see.

What people in the diaspora can do this week

Donate Snowflake bandwidth. The Tor Project’s Snowflake browser extension turns any willing tab into a temporary bridge for users circumventing censorship. It runs on idle bandwidth. Install it, leave it on.
Mirror first-hand testimony. If a family member sends you a voice memo, video, or photo of what’s happening — back it up to two places. Send it to a reporter if it’s safe to do so. Send it to us if you want help confirming it.
Don’t boost rumors. Diaspora Twitter moves at the speed of grief; bad information moves with it. Cross-reference at least two sources before you share — the regime benefits when our own community can’t tell what’s real.
Keep calling. Yes, even when the line drops. Yes, even when you only get a landline. People inside Iran tell us, every week: a phone call from someone in Florida, even one that doesn’t go through, is a reminder that they have not been forgotten.

A closing thought

The blackout will end. We don’t know when. Maybe in days, maybe in months. When it does, there will be a flood of imagery — the things that have been waiting to upload for half a year — and the world will be momentarily shocked, and then move on.

Our job, here in the diaspora, is not to be momentarily shocked. It is to be the people who were already paying attention. So that when the rest of the room catches up, we are already there, with the record in our hands, ready to hand it over.

If you have testimony from inside Iran you want to share with us — verified, anonymously, with care for source safety — email [email protected] or get involved at /join-us. Iran Watch handles every submission with the assumption that someone’s safety depends on us getting it right.