Iran’s internet blackout deepens further, says internet watchdog

An internet watchdog says Iran’s internet blackout has deepened, disrupting even semi-official Iranian news organizations.

It was not immediately clear what caused the disruption.

“Connectivity rapidly collapses from 12:00 p.m. UTC,” Alp Toker, the founder of NetBlocks, tells The Associated Press. Iranian state media social accounts that usually post frequently on X, including Fars News Agency, also abruptly stopped updating around the same time, coinciding with the disruption, he adds.

This is the first time a disconnection at that scale happened during the war that is entering its third week, but Netblocks observed “a similar blackout during the early part of the blackout during Iran’s January protests, so it isn’t unprecedented.”

While the Iranian public have been heavily restricted from accessing the internet since the start of the war on February 28, many Iranians were still able to get online using VPNs or Starlink connections. The latest disruption appears to have affected many of those routes, leaving significantly fewer users able to connect