Iran has effectively been cut off from the outside world. Phone calls to and from Iran are failing while state media dribbles out only partial updates. This dramatic clampdown on connectivity came amid rare public outrage over inflation and shortages. The closure of Tehran’s grand bazaars, long a bellwether of economic legitimacy, matters because it signals that discontent has moved from the margins into the commercial heart that regimes usually try hardest to keep neutral.
Protests began in late December over collapsing rial, accelerating prices, and shortages, turning daily life into a permanent emergency where the ordinary rituals of buying food, paying rent, or keeping a small business open become acts of endurance. Inflation above 40 per cent is a steady demolition of the middle rung that once cushioned the poor from outright destitution. Sanctions and regional confrontation have arguably tightened the vice, yet the more serious damage comes from an internal governance model that treats accountability as a threat.
Supreme Leader Khamenei says the unrest is a foreign plot, accusing rioters of being “mercenaries for foreigners.” Meanwhile, the chief judge warned that any Iranian “helping the enemy” will face the harshest penalties. These reflexive deflections do not answer the question on the street as to why a country with vast energy resources is unable to protect families from the cost-of-living spiral. State media’s fixation on exiled groups such as the MKO is meant to supply a tidy villain, yet it also reveals the regime’s discomfort with the obvious.
Long before this blackout, Iran’s government was building a digital wall. In early 2024, it banned unlicensed VPNs and pushed citizens onto a domestic national internet. Now, the country is largely dark. The official excuse is preventing enemy misuse of the network, but in practice, the shutdown keeps Iranians from sharing eyewitness accounts or organising help, fostering a self-inflicted silence at the worst possible time. The cutoff even grounded international flights. This instinct flows naturally from a political system that offers few legitimate outlets for dissent. Iran’s governance architecture concentrates decisive power, narrowing competition long before ballots are cast and reducing parliament to a managed arena. Economic grievance, therefore, has nowhere to travel except the street.
Pakistan, which calls Iran a “brotherly country,” watches the unrest carefully. Islamabad has argued for dialogue and non-interference, grounding its position in respect for sovereignty, while cautioning that instability next door rarely remains confined and tends to spill across borders in ways that strengthen non-state actors rather than states. *