Iran's 2026 blackout: how "restored" doesn't mean "open"
Monitoring orgs · 17.09.2026

In 2026, Iran gave a masterclass in disconnecting a country from the world without switching it off entirely. Two major shutdowns: one from January 8 amid protests, and another from February 28 — during military action following US and Israeli strikes. The second one lasted roughly 88 days. Restoration was announced on May 26. But "restored" doesn't mean "internet is back."

Cloudflare recorded traffic dropping to virtually zero in January. After the May announcement, traffic climbed to about 40% of 2026's peak, according to Cloudflare's data. Meanwhile, NetBlocks, cited by the Associated Press, reported 86% of bandwidth restored. Two numbers, two different sources — and both are correct, because they were measuring different things: traffic volume versus network capacity. Convenient for official reports, inconvenient for anyone just trying to figure out if their VPN works.

Technically, this isn't a single switch but a layered cake: international isolation, protocol interference (hello, QUIC, HTTP/3, encrypted DNS), throttling, platform blocking, attacks on circumvention tools, and — a genre of its own — selective access via "whitelists" and "white SIM cards." Some people kept their internet; others didn't. Iranian authorities framed this as a matter of national security, warning of the dangers of "illegal communication devices," including Starlink terminals. Human rights advocates and network observers describe it differently — as a tool of political control over protest coordination and the flow of information.

And it wasn't just foreign access that got blocked: during the January shutdown, even local news agencies became unreachable. The national intranet isn't a backup of the open internet — it's a showcase of approved content.

By August, Cloudflare Radar was observing activity on major Iranian networks again. That's a fact about traffic existing, not about ordinary users being able to use the internet normally. Restoration was announced. Openness was never guaranteed.

Source: https://www.itechguides.com/irans-internet-shutdown-explained-what-happened-and-what-restoration-means