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Iran Keeps Internet Mostly Off for 7th Day as US Levies Sanctions

Michael Lipin

   WASHINGTON - Iran has extended a major shutdown of internet access into
   a seventh day to suppress domestic opposition to the government,
   prompting the United States to sanction the Iranian official overseeing
   the outage.

     The [1]#Iran internet shutdown is now in its 144th hour, keeping
     friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of
     Iranians'±
     Subscribe to our network monitor channel to track national
     connectivity in real-time [2]#IranProtests [3]#Internet4Iran
     ð¡[4]https://t.co/71lkPvV2e2 [5]pic.twitter.com/EHpyZflNSE
     -- NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) [6]November 22, 2019

   In a tweet late Friday, London-based internet monitoring group
   NetBlocks said the shutdown had lasted a full six days and was "keeping
   friends and family out of touch and limiting the basic rights of
   Iranians." A livestream of Iran's internet connectivity rate on the
   group's [7]YouTube channel showed a slight improvement to 20%, after
   having risen to 15% from 5% on Thursday.

   Some Iranian officials have said they expect internet access to be
   gradually restored in the coming days. But there was no government
   announcement of a date for an end to the shutdown, which began in the
   evening of November 16 as authorities tried to stop Iranians from
   sharing images of nationwide anti-government protests that had erupted
   the previous day.

   A news agency of Iran's Islamic Azad University, a private national
   university network, said in a [8]Thursday article that seven other
   major universities in the country had their internet access restored.
   But it cited a public relations director for one of them, Sharif
   University, as saying the renewed access was "very slow."

   Iranian officials sparked the protestswhen they raised the subsidized
   price of gasoline by 50% on Nov.15. The hike further strains the
   finances of many Iranians facing hardship in an economy already
   weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement.

   In its first punitive response to the internet shutdown, the Trump
   administration sanctioned Iranian Information and Communications
   TechnologyMinister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Friday.

References

   1. https://twitter.com/hashtag/Iran?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   2. https://twitter.com/hashtag/IranProtests?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   3. https://twitter.com/hashtag/Internet4Iran?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   4. https://t.co/71lkPvV2e2
   5. https://t.co/EHpyZflNSE
   6. https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1197918572510617600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxdPm0vB-FA
   8. http://bit.ly/2OcwCa1

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