- On Tuesday, June 17, 2025, Iran’s authorities ask all citizens to eliminate WhatsApp from their devices
- On Wednesday, Netblocks reported an almost total Internet blackout throughout the country
- The authorities restored access to WhatsApp in December 2024 after more than 2 years of prohibition
Iran has asked its citizens to eliminate WhatsApp from their smartphones with fears that the messaging service has become a source of strategic information for their opponent in their current conflict.
As reported by Associated Press, Iranian state television shared the warning on Tuesday, June 17, “claiming without specific evidence that the messaging application compiled user information to send Israel.”
Meta, the company behind WhatsApp, has strongly rejected these accusations and said that “worried these false reports will be an excuse for our services to block at a time when people need them more,” AP said.
Iran recently restored access to WhatsApp, in December 2024, after a two -year prohibition that followed the massive protests in the country for the death of Mahsa Jhina Amini at the hands of the morality police of Iran.
Now, Internet restrictions have intensified once again throughout the country since Friday, after the first Israeli attacks, and many citizens resort to VPN applications to stay connected.
On Wednesday, June 18, Internet Watchdog Netblocks recorded “an almost total Internet blackout” throughout the country.
The Internet space in Iran
As the conflict deepens, people in Iran have been found more and more from the global Internet.
The restrictions imposed by the Government began last Friday (June 13), after the threats of legal actions of Iran’s attorney general against the media and users of social networks by content that “interrupts the psychological security of society,” Iranwire said.
This has fed an increase in VPN’s demand in Iran that reached the peaks of an increase of more than 700% on Sunday.
There have also been VPN strangulation reports with users who discover that their VPN applications have only worked sporadically. Talking to Techradar, Proton VPN confirmed the use of use along with an important repression of VPN in the region.
⚠️ Confirmed: live network data show that #Iran is now in the middle of a national internet blackout almost total; The incident follows a series of previous partial interruptions and occurs in the midst of growing military tensions with Israel after days of back and failed missile attacks 📉 pic.twitter.com/iu598aimrjJune 18, 2025
Incidents come after a series of partial interruptions that Netblocks has been recording since Friday.
The main supplier of DNS Cloudflare also confirmed the interruptions, informing a 90% drop in connectivity from 4 PM, local time on Wednesday. These incidents do not seem due to infrastructure damage.
On Monday, a government spokesman Fatemeh Mohajarani, explained Internet restrictions as “temporary, directed and controlled, to avoid cyber attacks”, but also prevents citizens from communicating and accessing information in the most critical times.
When commenting on this, the general manager of Proton VPN, David Peterson, said: “In Iran, Internet blackouts, as well as VPN blocks and social networks have been normalized and are now another tool to which the regime can resort.”
While VPNs resistant to censorship as Proton VPN can work to avoid directed online interruptions, they cannot help in times of total internet blackout.
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