Global internet access returned to Iran this week, but for many Iranians, reconnecting to the outside world still comes at a steep price.
After nearly 90 days of restrictions imposed by Iranian authorities, activists and opposition figures told Alhurra that most users continue to rely on costly VPNs and specialized anti-filtering software sold through networks they say are tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
For many Iranians, the issue is no longer simply internet blackouts. Critics say a broader system has emerged around them: relatively open access for politically connected groups, expensive and closely monitored service for those who can afford it, and near-total exclusion for everyone else.
Jafar Bakhtiari, who runs a small leather workshop in Tehran producing shoes and handbags, said he obtained a “Pro” internet package through intermediaries so his business would not collapse.
“The subscription alone, together with anti-filtering software, cost me nearly 30 million tomans this month,” he told Alhurra — about $170.
Bakhtiari depends on social media to market his products inside Iran and abroad, including to customers in Iraq and Armenia. He said he was unable to sell a single item during the first months of the year because of the internet disruptions and the war, before recovering some business in recent weeks after obtaining paid access.
Others say they have been forced to move part of their operations outside Iran.
Nasser, a pseudonym used by a craftsman from the northwestern city of Urmia, said he now travels abroad several times a month to manage customer orders and promote his ceramic products online.
“I could not get the internet access I needed to run my business inside Iran,” he said. “So I chose Iraqi Kurdistan as a temporary base and arranged with handicraft shops there to display our products.”
A Profitable Market for Restrictions
Iranian activists and opposition figures say repeated internet shutdowns and restrictions have created a lucrative underground market for VPNs and censorship circumvention tools — one they allege benefits networks linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
Farzin Karbasi, an Iranian Kurdish opposition analyst based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said the Revolutionary Guards have effectively “monopolized the internet in Iran for years,” first through censorship and restrictions, and then through the market built around bypassing them.
He said relatives and associates of security officials help oversee the sale of anti-filtering applications, calling the trade “a major source of financing for the Guards and the Islamic Republic institutions.”
The allegations extend beyond informal brokers. Activists and opposition figures interviewed by Alhurra described a wider ecosystem of state-linked technology and telecommunications firms that they say either operate under government oversight or maintain ties to the Revolutionary Guards.
Among the companies most frequently mentioned is ArvanCloud. In 2023, the United States Treasury Department sanctioned the company, its Dubai-based affiliate and two senior employees, accusing them of helping Iranian authorities build digital infrastructure capable of isolating Iran from the global internet while strengthening a tightly controlled domestic network.
Other firms cited by activists include Kara Mehr Qeshm, Sina Communication and Information Technology Development Group and Tose’e Etemad Mobin, as well as major telecommunications providers such as Hamrah-e Aval, Irancell, Asiatech and Mobinnet.
Activists describe those companies as part of a broader structure involved in internet access, filtering and surveillance. But the degree of each company’s connection to the Revolutionary Guards varies and, in many cases, remains difficult to independently verify.
Some firms, such as ArvanCloud, have been publicly identified through sanctions or international investigations. Other allegations rely largely on claims made by activists and opposition figures and cannot be confirmed independently.
Internet for the Connected
In recent months, debate inside Iran has increasingly focused on what critics describe as a tiered internet system.
Under that model, politically connected groups receive access to a largely unrestricted “white internet,” while journalists, merchants and business owners can purchase expensive “Pro” services. Ordinary users are left with heavily filtered access.
But even “Pro” service does not provide unrestricted connectivity, Karbasi said. The packages remain costly and monitored, and many websites and applications still require additional circumvention tools.
Citing information gathered from activists inside Iran, Karbasi said the price of one gigabyte of internet access on the unofficial market currently ranges between 540,000 and 1.8 million tomans — roughly $3 to $10 — depending on speed and quality.
Maintaining even minimal daily access, he said, can cost some families about $100 per month, equal to or exceeding the income of many middle-class households.
Zhila Mostajer, a board member at the rights organization Hengaw, said Iranians are increasingly forced to purchase “different kinds” of internet access at different prices. But she argued that the packages and anti-filtering applications ultimately pass through economic networks linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
“People suffer from internet repression,” she said, “and then the same system gradually allows them to escape that repression in exchange for enormous sums of money.”
A Shift Toward the Chinese Model
Iranian authorities do not officially acknowledge that the Revolutionary Guards profit from the VPN market. But officials have openly recognized the enormous scale of the underground economy surrounding internet access.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a televised debate that Iranians were spending more money bypassing censorship than paying for internet access itself. He added that the groups profiting from the system were not paying taxes — comments critics interpreted as a reference to influential networks within the state.
Pezeshkian argued that the government should negotiate directly with foreign technology companies instead of leaving the market to intermediaries.
Former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also criticized the system during the election campaign, saying authorities could not “filter the internet” and then sell tools to bypass those same restrictions.
In an interview published Sunday by the Iranian website Zoomit, Mohammad Sarafraz, a member of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, said the country was moving toward a model closer to China’s system of internet governance.
Sarafraz, who is considered close to Iran’s ruling establishment, said a broad faction within the government favors stricter limits on global internet access while expanding domestic online services. International connectivity, he suggested, would increasingly be reserved for select groups.
He said China had largely blocked the global internet for ordinary citizens while providing a controlled domestic network for the broader population. Iran, he added, has imported Chinese equipment to help implement a similar model.
The Iranian news website Tabnak, which is close to the Assembly of Experts, also quoted former lawmaker Jalal Rashidi Koochei as saying that the heads of parliament, the judiciary and the presidency support restoring internet access while maintaining restrictions on international websites and social media platforms.
Economic and Human Rights Costs
The consequences of Iran’s internet restrictions extend beyond debates over privacy and freedom of expression.
Small businesses, online retailers, freelancers and digital entrepreneurs who rely on Instagram, messaging apps and online marketing have suffered significant losses.
For Bakhtiari, the leather craftsman in Tehran, internet access is inseparable from his livelihood. For Nasser, the ceramics artisan in Urmia, maintaining customers meant relocating part of his business to Iraq. Lower-income Iranians, activists say, have effectively been pushed offline altogether.
In March, Human Rights Watch said Iran’s complete internet shutdowns violated multiple human rights protections. The organization said the blackouts help conceal abuses, facilitate disinformation, unlawfully restrict access to information and obstruct the work of journalists and human rights monitors, including efforts to document potential violations of the laws of war.
The group called on Iranian authorities to restore unrestricted internet access across the country and urged the international community to support civilians’ ability to connect online.
For now, Iran’s partial reconnection to the global web does not appear to mark the end of the crisis. Access to the internet remains tied to money, political proximity and the ability to purchase tools that circumvent state controls.
While Iranian authorities insist the restrictions are necessary for national security, critics argue that the government has built an entire economy around denying citizens access to a basic right — and then selling them the means to bypass the controls.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic
