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Iran internet blackout enters 60th day

3 min read

09:17UTC

Netblocks logged Iranian connectivity at 1 to 4 per cent of normal across the 60-day national blackout, the longest sustained restriction in its tracker. The 2019 Iran shutdown lasted five days.

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Key takeaway

Sixty days of blackout has converted from an emergency tool into governance and into a future bargaining chip.

Iran's nationwide internet shutdown entered its 60th consecutive day on Tuesday 28 April, an estimated 1,440 cumulative hours of restricted national connectivity. NetBlocks, the London-based internet observatory that operates the most-cited cross-country tracker of state-imposed shutdowns, has logged Iranian connectivity at 1 to 4 per cent of normal across the period⁠¹. The 2019 Iranian shutdown, the previous benchmark, lasted five days; the current run is twelvefold longer and has overtaken every state-imposed restriction the tracker has documented since launch in 2016.

The operational distinction matters. A five-day blackout is an emergency control tool, deployed during acute protest unrest and lifted before economic dependencies fail. A sixty-day blackout is something else: the Iranian government has discovered that domestic banking, logistics, healthcare scheduling and food distribution can function on the internal national-information-network the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting authority and the Ministry of Communications built in stages from 2016 onwards, without restoring access to the global internet. Restoration has stopped being a domestic-political imperative and has become a discretionary tool the state can offer or withhold in negotiation.

The civilian population has been informationally isolated through every Pakistani mediation round, every diplomatic capital Abbas Araghchi has visited and every wartime address the executive has delivered. Iranians cannot read in real time the three-phase ceasefire text their own foreign minister handed Pakistan, watch the Boris Yeltsin Library photographs of their president's envoy meeting Putin, or verify the casualty figures Hengaw publishes from Yazd and Ghezel Hesar. The diaspora and human rights monitors maintain the documentary record on the population's behalf; the population has no independent reading of the terms being negotiated in its name.

The blackout's persistence at sixty days is also a confidence-building measure available for the next round. Restoration is the cheapest concession Tehran can offer, costs nothing to deliver and has measurable verification: NetBlocks reads will rise, civilian commerce will resume, the diaspora will see the change. If a Hormuz-first text reaches signed form, restoration becomes a separately negotiable line item that does not require either side to move on the nuclear file.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iranians have been cut off from the internet for two months. They cannot see what their own government is offering Washington, watch their foreign minister meet Russia's president, or read human rights reports about executions happening at home. The government can say anything it likes about the negotiations domestically because the population has no way to check. This is twelve times longer than any previous national internet shutdown on record.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Iran's connectivity infrastructure runs through three state-controlled backbone providers , Telecommunication Infrastructure Company (TIC), Irancell and MCI , all of which are legally required to comply with orders from the Supreme Council of Cyberspace.

The council is chaired by the President but its decisions require Supreme Leader approval. The shutdown's continuation through Pezeshkian's presidency therefore reflects a command-level decision above the reformist civilian government, consistent with the IRGC political structure that has sidelined Araghchi on operational matters.

At 1,440 hours, the shutdown has also covered every Hengaw documentation cycle for wartime executions. Domestic media cannot publish Fakhrabadi's execution; the only record reaching international audiences is via Hengaw's diaspora network. The blackout is serving a dual function: suppressing political opposition and controlling the execution documentation flow.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Internet restoration now constitutes a measurable confidence-building concession Iran could offer in any Hormuz-first deal at near-zero operational cost, providing a low-friction diplomatic chip with domestic-legitimacy value.
Risk
Sixty days of information isolation means the Iranian population has no context for any deal terms presented domestically; the government could announce favourable deal terms that contradict the written text held by Pakistan without domestic challenge.

Source Landscape

Primary parallel: Myanmar's military junta imposed rolling regional internet shutdowns from 2019 onward after its coup, ultimately sustaining connectivity blackouts in Rakhine State for over 500 days , the previous global record at the time. Like Iran's 2026 shutdown, the Myanmar blackouts were used to suppress civilian documentation of military operations. The pattern: extended blackouts shift from emergency tools to governance infrastructure.

Counter-parallel: Ethiopia imposed a two-week internet shutdown during the Tigray conflict in 2020-2021, then restored it under international pressure tied to humanitarian access negotiations.

Ethiopia's government restored connectivity at the 2021 Pretoria peace talks, receiving ceasefire monitoring concessions in return, converting the blackout into a diplomatic chip. The Ethiopian parallel shows internet access can function as a negotiating lever; the Myanmar parallel shows it can instead become permanent infrastructure.

Consensus view: Access Now's Digital Security Lab assesses the 60-day duration as operationally transformative: at this length, the Iranian government has governed stably through six ceasefire rounds, three Pakistani mediation cycles and Araghchi's three-capital circuit with no civilian connectivity at all.

At five days, Iran's 2019 shutdown was a temporary emergency tool; 1,440 hours in, it has become Tehran's standard operating environment, with restoration carrying no domestic-pressure imperative.

Counter-view: NetBlocks' Alp Toker notes the 1-4 per cent connectivity range is not zero and the resilient population segment , diaspora-linked, VPN-equipped, approximately 2-3 million Iranians , has maintained access throughout. The Iranian government has accepted a permanent insider intelligence risk in exchange for mass-population isolation.

Key tension: Whether internet restoration becomes a negotiable confidence-building measure in any Hormuz-first deal, giving Tehran a low-cost diplomatic chip to offer in exchange for concessions, or whether Tehran has concluded the blackout's governance benefits outweigh any diplomatic value from restoration.

Sources:NetBlocks

Mentions:Iran →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Russia →Pakistan →Tehran →Washington →Abbas Araghchi →Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library →Iranian Navy →Ministry of Communications →Qezel Hesar Prison →Yazd →NetBlocks →Hengaw →Alp Toker →Supreme Council of Cyberspace →Supreme Leader →

First Reported In

Update #82 · Iran writes Phase 1; Washington still has no pen

NetBlocks· 28 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Iran internet blackout enters 60th day

A government negotiating on its citizens' behalf with no domestic feedback loop can claim any deal terms it wants without contradiction. Sustained blackout has converted from an emergency tool into governance.

Led to

SNSC restores 'Internet Pro' on Day 60

Internet Pro scheme approved on 28 April is the first concession on the 60-day blackout logged at 1,416 hours in ID:2857.

Occurred 28 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

Russia

Russia vetoed the same renewal on 17 September, arguing that Britain, France and Germany never validly triggered the snapback that reimposed the pre-2015 UN resolutions. No panel was ever seated under that mandate, so the UN list decays fastest for states that screen against it rather than against the American one.

China

China vetoed renewal of the UN sanctions monitoring mandate on 17 September, arguing that Resolution 2231 terminated on 18 October 2025 and that the Security Council should drop Iran's nuclear file altogether. On that reading there is nothing to monitor, so the sanctions survive and their enforcement does not.

Iraq

Baghdad saw the last American counter-Islamic State troops leave its territory on 30 September, completing a timetable it agreed with Washington in September 2024. Iraqi airspace deconfliction passes to Baghdad, which still has an open inquiry into the Maysan drone launches that has named nobody.

Pakistan

Treasury names Waseem Pasha Tajammal of Rawalpindi as the Cavalier group's chairman and places one of the designated incorporations in Islamabad. QatarEnergy separately told Pakistan that liquefied natural gas cargo cancellations would run through November, so Islamabad carries an enforcement question and a supply gap at once.

Turkey

Treasury named a Cavalier Dynamics company incorporated in Istanbul among the ten nodes it designated on 29 September, and Ankara has published no response. Turkey imported a record 120,000 barrels a day of Indian diesel in August, cutting Russia's share of its diesel imports to 20 per cent.

India

Suraj Yadav, a wiper from Uttar Pradesh, was killed aboard the Cape Dao on 23 September, and 19 of the ship's 20 Indian crew were taken off alive. India's September imports ran at 575,000 barrels a day from Iraq and 566,000 from Saudi Arabia, back to pre-conflict rates.