Iran sets a world record for the Internet

Iran has officially gone down in history as the country with the longest nationwide Internet blackout. According to NetBlocks, an organization that monitors the state of network freedom in the world, the Iranian blackout has lasted for 37 consecutive days — more than 864 hours — and has surpassed all previous comparable cases in terms of scale and duration.

The blackout began on February 28 after a joint US-Israeli military operation against Tehran. Since then, the level of Internet traffic in the country has dropped to about 1% of normal.

Iran was the first country to have a connection to the global network and then actually revert to an isolated national Internet. Countries such as Myanmar, Sudan, and Ethiopia have experienced prolonged regional or intermittent blackouts, but none of them have disconnected the entire country from the global network for such a long period of time after its citizens already had access to the Internet.

Most Iranians have access only to a limited domestic network with state resources. Only those who are on the government’s «white list» — officials, state media, and affiliated entities — can connect to the global Internet.

Back in January 2026, Filterwatch published materials about the Iranian authorities' secret long-term plan for «absolute digital isolation» — the transformation of the country’s Internet infrastructure into a «barracks Internet» accessible only to people with the appropriate security clearance.