The question in Iran is no longer when the Internet will return, but rather who will return first. While international communication remains widely restricted, the authorities have begun gradually opening it to specific groups, the most recent of which is university professors.
From this angle, the latest step may appear to be a link in a broader path that moves the Internet from being a public service to selective access that passes through lists and exceptions.
List mechanism
The most recent manifestation of this path came from the Ministry of Science. Sharq newspaper quoted the Assistant Minister of Science for Research Affairs, Mehdi Abtahi, as saying that access to the international Internet has already begun for university professors based on a list prepared by the ministry, and that it will later expand to include the rest of the teaching staff, then researchers, research centers, and think tanks.
The newspaper linked this to the passage of 8 weeks of widespread outage and the duration of the digital blackout exceeding 1,200 hours.
Communications Minister Sattar Hashmi said that “class Internet” or “whitelisting” were irrelevant, and that good access to the global network was a right for all people.
Today, Iranian media also reported a similar position from First Vice President Mohammad Reza Arif, in which he stressed that fair and public access to the Internet is a right for all citizens and that any discrimination in access is not consistent with digital justice.
But the continuation of the list mechanism, and the beginning of expansion through it, practically reveals something else, which is a political denial of the classification, matched by administrative implementation based on the classification itself.
Universities here are not the beginning of the idea, but rather the latest official gateway to it. The term “white Internet” was widely used in Iranian media before that.
Expanding the circle of exceptions
Last December, Asr Iran quoted the head of the President’s Office, Mohsen Haji Mirzaei, as saying that unblocked Internet or “white lines” would be abolished “even for members of the government,” which reveals that this type of different access was known and present in the official discourse before the decision to expand access to university professors.
Over time, this preferential access moved from the circle of undeclared privilege to a commercial and administrative formula. According to Sharq, “Internet Pro” is a type of special access that focuses on stable connectivity and less restricted access to some international services, and is not available to all users, but is mainly directed to specific professional and economic activities.
The newspaper explains that this pattern is supported by the main operators, while professional and official bodies participate in confirming the identity of users and identifying the “target community.” The communication path in it differs from the public Internet and priority is given to data movement during disruption.
Here the controversy does not stop at the boundaries of the technology or the groups that benefit, but also relates to the nature of this path itself. Asr Iran website quoted human rights activist Kambiz Norouzi that “Internet Pro” carries a contradiction even for business owners, because they need a connected audience in order to sell and provide their services, while depriving people of access makes the business Internet itself useless.
Hence, the controversy is no longer limited to the question of who owns the communication, but rather extends to the question of who owns the decision itself. In the Iranian technical media, readings appeared describing the file as a “tangled thread,” considering it a case of administrative confusion, as more than one party within the executive authority declares its rejection of the class-based Internet, while the practical reality remains based on lists and exceptions.
This is not proven alone by the decisive party in the decision, but it clearly reflects the widening contradiction between the official discourse and the executive path.
The logic of expansion did not stop with professors or companies. IRNA reported that the Ministry of Communications is working to regulate the conditions of independent workers, or “freelancers,” through the “Nasr” organization, in order to restore access to the international Internet to them as quickly as possible.
With this, it seems that the discussion is no longer about returning the network to the entire society, but rather about expanding the circle of exceptions to include additional professional categories whenever necessary.
The economic cost of this type of management does not appear to be marginal. “The Age of Iran” quoted Abbas Ashtiani, head of a committee specializing in the digital economy within the Computer Syndicate Organization in Iran, that 50 days of internet shutdowns cost the Iranian digital economy about a billion dollars, with average daily losses ranging between 30 and 35 million dollars, between direct and indirect losses and loss of benefits.
He also said that opening a limited number of platforms or services may be positive, but it is not enough to compensate for the damage, and that returning to before the interruption requires a long time and investment in the quality of infrastructure.
