Iran, January 2026: During some of the country's largest protests in decades, the Iranian government shut down the internet.
US-based internet monitor, IODA — short for Internet Outage Detection and Analysis — registered almost no data traffic at all and US internet infrastructure analyst Doug Madory described it as "one of the largest government-directed communication shutdowns in history."
During that time, the Iranian government killed and arrested thousands of people but to this day, nobody knows exactly how many. Estimates of the death toll have been anywhere between 7,000 and 40,000, though many observers suspect its closer to the higher number. The lack of clarity is partially because the internet blackout meant that communication with the outside world was all but impossible.
The Iranian government's behavior is not unusual. In Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Sudan, particularly when governments fear resistance, the internet has become a weapon — because those who cannot communicate cannot organize.
Radio-powered networks
