Inside Iran’s Internet Blackout

Welcome to another episode of Telemetry Now. Today's show was just planned last night as we saw the news of the events of civil unrest and subsequent Internet blackouts in Iran.

As many people took to the streets to voice frustration over economic hardship and political repression, authorities responded by cutting off Internet access and communications, a tactic Iran has used before to suppress dissent and control the flow of information.

Monitoring groups like Kentik and Netblocks did confirm a near total digital blackout as connectivity dropped sharply amid escalating unrest across Tehran and other cities.

In today's episode, Amir Rashidi joins us to discuss the situation in Iran as well as the Internet shutdown itself.

Doug Madory, Kentik's director of Internet analysis and a colleague of Amir, will be with us today leading the discussion.

So today, we'll break down how this outage unfolded, what it means for connectivity and censorship, and why Internet resilience matters in moments of civil crisis.

My name is Philip Gervasi, and this is Telemetry Now.

Thank you, Amir, for joining us today, especially at such short notice. And before we get started, please introduce yourself and your organization before Doug then takes over to lead us in today's discussion.

Sure. First of all, thank you for having me. And, Doug, I really, really appreciate all of your help and support. You know, every single time you are dealing with, crisis shutdown, you are with us.

Really appreciate it. I'm the director of Internet Security and Digital Rights at Miaan Group. What we do is monitoring and researching and reporting on Iran's Internet policy, censorship, surveillance, and also we are running twenty four hours digital security help desk, which is people can reach out if they have any kind of cybersecurity issues, challenges, or even internet connectivity issue, and we do our best to support them. Obviously, Miaan running other human rights projects, women's rights projects, ethnic minority rights projects, but my colleagues running those kind of projects, my focus is entirely on access, digital rights, and the security.

And Filterbaan is an initiative or a program that you guys Filterbaan, Filterbaan, or in English, "Filterwatch", the website filter.watch, was originally a project of small media, but they have transferred this project to Miaan, and we kind of kind of changed everything within a project, and it's what you see.

Amir, thanks for joining us. So we are in the middle of another shutdown in Iran, and this one is pretty severe.

Really appreciate you taking some time away. I know you and I are both kinda working on this. This is this is your thing. So you've got more a lot more depth in your your background and knowledge about the situation around.

Before we get into the technical details of this Internet disruption, would you maybe briefly just characterize for people who haven't been following the day to day news of Iran, what triggered these protests over the last couple of weeks and how did they snowball into where we're at right now?

Well, everything but well, things starts with would say the main thing that fanned the flame was the economic crisis.

However, the process currently is not about economy anymore, but let's go back to when how this is sorted. Right now, we are dealing with a country with a very huge corruption in any shape and form. And there are a lot of different crisis from energy, to even pollution, to economy, you just name it. Anything you wanna name that a government is in charge of providing for people who are living in country is a crisis, everything.

Iran was just finished the twelve day wars with Israel, right?

And what Iranian government have done was basically, when you look at the budget that was introduced to the parliament, they literally dedicated all the money coming from oil into the missiles program.

And then you need money to pay people who work for the government and also for the development, right? And the money for those kinds of things are coming from taxes that people need to pay. So I was talking to my dad, he's a retired teacher, and he told me, now I have to basically pay tax anything that I make. Everything I make, I have to pay it back to the government, and even put something on top of it and pay it back to the government as a tax.

So that fanned the flame within a bazaar, the main markets in Iran, which traditionally they are supporters of the Islamic Republic. Back then in the revolution, Islamic revolution, they were huge supporter of the revolution. They were paying a lot of money and things like that. But this bazaar today is has nothing to do with the traditional bazaar.

Sorry. When you're saying bazaar, like, is this like I think of like a a souk or a market, like, that what we're talking about or?

Yes, yes, yes, So, but this buzzer today has nothing to do with the traditional buzzer back in forty seven years ago, right?

There's a new generation and everything is different. So they came to the street and start protesting and because of the exchange rate of the dollar and everything like that.

And so immediately, Khamenei, the supreme leader what country has the supreme leader? Let me think about it. North Korea, right? Maybe just Iran and them. No other country I'm hearing to anyone called the leader of the country, supreme leader.

So he came and said, yeah, bazaar is traditionally our supporter. So we're gonna make sure they are fine, but people who are protesting in strict, they are not coming because of the economic challenges. They are receiving support from our enemy, meaning Israel and United States. By the way, I'm an enemy because I'm living in United States, right? Sometimes, sometimes in Italy, but I'm an enemy too.

But number of protests actually were not really that high.

Actually was kind of going down, another things So timeframe are you talking about when you're saying the protests weren't high?

Let's say up to the six, basically like a week timeframe, right?

After a first week, kind of the number of the protest was coming going down.

However, another things fanned the flame. Because they wanted to give some sort of incentive to the people, because of the economic crisis, they announced, we're gonna give people coupon, and also one million one million Tommen for every single member of a family member, right? If you have like four people living in one family, they're gonna receive four million, and they said that we're gonna pay you four months in advance.

So just to let you know how much is Four million sounds like a lot, but I'm guessing it's not.

One million ton month is equal to seven dollars. Okay.

Seven US dollar, right?

So people see that as an insult, right?

And that actually backlash, immediately after that we saw a lot of people came to the street, including bazaar and things like that.

And finally, a day after that, I guess it was the ninth day, if I'm not wrong, Reza Pahlavi announced, hey, I'm calling on Iranian people. He is the son of the last king in Iran.

Right? That's a so I saw that detail.

I guess I again, I'm not I don't know Iran like you do.

I didn't think that the shah or like, I know people aren't fans of the current government, but I didn't know that there was interest in bringing back the monarchy. Is that does does that does guy end up influential in in Iran?

Some people some people they they like, some they don't. I personally am not a fan of any king anywhere. I'm the fan of democracy.

It's a little anachronistic, it feels like, to bring back the king, but okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So he came back and called for people to come out and do the protest.

And people came, right? Because keep that in mind, people have good memory from his father's time. His father's time, in my opinion, was a dictatorship, but economy was good, right? And the Iranian passport was valid for traveling almost anywhere you wanna go without visa and anything like that.

Anything that you see, most of the Iranian, they see themselves as like, they are very proud of their history coming from like a Persian empire, the first declaration of human rights, whatever, all of these things. And going back to that time, people see that particular period of time as, yeah, maybe we didn't have freedom, right? Freedom of speech or whatever, but the economy was good. We could make money.

And that's the kind of trend you can see kind of almost everywhere. This is kind of rising, this kind of trend everywhere that people usually, they don't really care about democracy. They more care about the economy, Right? You can find it in Europe, in US, anywhere else.

So the son of the Shah gives says everybody should come out in the streets. We were there was already it's beginning of, like, around December twenty eighth or something. This is fairly recent, like like two weeks ago.

Some little protests started in smaller towns.

You know, I think I saw you, you know, discussing this.

It wasn't clear that it was gonna amount to anything because these these things kinda come and go.

Like, there's a lot of lot of discontent, let's say, in in Iran, just in general. And but then it seemed like it kept growing. It seemed like this this factor with the the son of the shah calling people into the street, Maybe it was just gave them the excuse they needed, and a lot of different factions seem to be aligning in going out to the street and protesting the government.

And anyway, is there any other major factors?

But it's mostly economic people are the frustration in the Frustration and economy.

Yes.

Okay. So then, also, I guess leading up to yesterday, because we had a we'll get into these these technical details of what took place, but there's been some selective, I would say, Internet blockages happening in rural areas. I know, like, some of us I've been trying to dig through data, trying to you know, we can see some weirdness, you know, like, I think we're all those of us in the west of these Internet companies, we're we're limited by, the accuracy of the geolocation of some of our data and they're just the services we use typically don't have airtight geolocation for rural countryside of Iran.

It's just not well. So, you know, we'll see some disruptions. It's not clear where it is. Maybe our data says Tehran.

It's probably not Tehran. You know? So so it's been it's been hard to confirm that. It's not to say it didn't happen, but it that's right.

There's been some some smaller regional or localized outages taking place up until yesterday.

Is that correct? True.

No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's true.

And and, I mean, this this this kind of shutdown, you you know, Doug, I'm I'm working on Internet shutdown for maybe over the past twenty years.

And this is this is the worst Internet shutdown I have ever seen in Iran. And I guess it's kind of maybe true to say even all around the world, this is the worst kind, because not only the internet is being cut off, you are cut off, you don't have access to the outside the country, but also you don't have access to the local network. Europe, they have created this local kind of really huge country size intranet, right?

But even that local internet local network was created because they wanted to shut down the internet, but at the same time, running the local infrastructure, like online taxi, online payment, everything that the modern government needs to run. However, that local network is being shut down too. Mobile has no reception.

Even we see something that I haven't seen, maybe Ukraine, that a stalling being jammed.

This is also like Yeah, there's a whole bunch of topics here.

We'll go through these one by one. Think like, why don't Yeah, no, this is important. I think also there's a lot of Every time there's a big outage, everybody's tweeting at Elon Musk, start on some things. Activate service in Iran.

I think that everybody understands that it's actually working there. It's not easy. You have to get the terminals and stuff, you know, but that's let's get to that. But before we do, how about the about the the National Internet National Information Network?

At one point, when it was first started, it would people were referring to it as, like, Halal Internet. This is the the Internet, and now nobody uses that term, but the n I n. And I think it was back in twenty eleven or two thousand twelve when it was first really getting up and running myself and a guy named Colin Anderson who used to be really prominent in Iranian digital research.

We've actually mapped this out where we actually got servers inside of Iran and traced out because what end up we discovered was that they had numbered it. I don't know if it's still the case completely, but it was all ten dot address space. Phil, you appreciate this. The country is like RC nineteen.

They they they they actually route, and so every ISP was getting allotted ten dot address space, and and the the national internal network just to guarantee the traffic wouldn't leak out, they numbered it with this ten dot address space, which is gives kind of hilarious way to implement this. Obviously, no company then could ever use ten dot address space in Iran once the the national network I mean, I know when we were writing this up, obviously, this was done the purportedly to protect Iran and protect, you know, from outsiders and stuff. They they didn't wanna get it. Somehow this would help them from not get it attacked or they could stay online if they got cut off or if they cut themselves off, they could stay online.

I guess the the the thought that had crossed my mind is, you know, you're also creating kinda like a free fire zone. If a if an adversary of Iran, why don't you just mess with, you know, drop you know, Stuxnet, the the the the malware that went after the the centrifuges and ran, you know, it leaked out, and it and this is part of the part of the the danger of those kind of technologies. You know, it showed up in other places. It's being used for different things.

If you had if you wanted to just have, like, a free fire zone, everything's ten dot address space. If you can get your, you know, your malware in and just go, hey. Anytime you see anything ten dot, go for it. And if they put everything sensitive or important into that network, seem like you're you're creating a a lot of risk there, but, you know, that's they've they've, I guess, made their peace with that for for many years now.

So that so this was this has been under development for many years. They have their own versions of, like, everything you can think of. It's like China. Like, they have their own domestic version of Google Maps and Google this or, you know Yeah.

And then They have Go ahead.

They they they they do have basically, they they kind of replicate everything, every single like messaging app, search engine, email services.

I don't know anything you name it. Part of it is it was because of the sanctions, but another part was also because they wanted these services to have to be able to shut down the internet and the local infrastructure working. Right?

It also supports the domestic, know, technology sector as it did in China. You know, there's there's, like, there's a number of factors to that. I guess what's weird is they put a lot of effort into building this, and it seemed like for for you know, every time there's a shutdown, well, we've got, you know, contacts inside who are, like, testing this to see if this is working, like, as planned. I think in general, I don't know if you'd agree if this has been it's working generally up until last twenty four hours.

It's doing what they wanted it to do. I try to lower the cost of having a shutdown because a a total shutdown is very costly. It disrupts business. It disrupts the government, all society.

And so you would like to have some kind of thing that lowers that cost. This is the point you made to me, Amir, when I was writing something about the Internet curfews back in twenty twenty two of this is the danger of this kind of thing. I said if you can lower the cost on the regime of taking the Internet down, then they may be more likely to to use this tool. And and so I guess it seemed like, well, they're investing a lot of resources and time into this.

They're building it. But but why why would they take it down?

Is it is it broken, or is it intentionally I mean, do we know?

Because it can also be broken.

I think I think it's kind of combination of both. Right? If you remember, like, couple of days ago, we were talking about how some APIs of e governments are broken, they are not working well as they used to work.

I guess it was like three days ago that we were seeing some suspicious activity, hearing something from here and there. And then a friend of mine told me, hey, I think we need to be ready for the internet shutdown. Because one, they are informing the tech companies that be ready for internet shutdown. Two, something is not work as they supposed to work. I asked him, what do you mean? He said, look, I'm doing some business with the government online. Like, let's say, want to renew my passport.

And in order to, they basically identify my identity, they're using API connected to another government office to just check, hey, this is my national number ID, this is my name, if it's right or wrong.

And then, as usual, API send the information, get the information, and then do the rest of the job. And he was like, none of these APIs are working. All of these systems are kind of broken. Why at the same time, all of this is broken?

Either we are in war, or there is some sort of cyber attack, or misconfiguration, or they are trying to be ready for internet shutdown. And then another friend said, who is working in data centers in Iran, he told me, yeah, we were being informed that we need to be ready for internet shutdown. So it's like combination of everything, right? They're to fix something. And as we said, these ten base IP addresses, or even the design of the internet in Iran is very centralized, right? You have just two gateway, and one is basically providing internet for everyone in the country. So as soon as you try to change something, it's very likely that something's fall down, something might break.

Shutting down the internet is a kind of complicated thing, right? Because you don't have just a button to push and everything be shut down.

You need to deal with so many different I think they could, but they don't wanna I think you've made this argument with your organization that there's been some growing sophistication over the last, whatever, decade or more so that they you know, you you have the the nuclear option like Egypt did in January twenty eleven where just everything a hundred percent goes down.

Okay. Well, that's super costly, and also the the the the government can't operate and business, you know, everything can't operate. So they have to have some sort of more sophisticated thing.

It seems like there's been a growing level of sophistication where they can be more selective and leave certain important things on, but most of everything else is That was actually the kind of from the government perspective, the success story of twenty nineteen internet shutdown, right?

Because back then, the system was not efficient as is today. It was not the things that we are seeing today. They shut down the internet, and then there was whole other crisis everywhere. Now they are very sophisticated.

They can shut down in a particular neighborhood. They can shut down in a region. They can shut down in a country, in a province. And they have a very good chain of command too.

It's not only on the technical side, even the chain of command is very clear. And now they have the capability to whitelist things, right? They have the capability to say, we want this messaging application to be connected to the internet, and that's it, nothing else. We want this university, we want this entity to be connected to the internet in a certain way.

We want Eta to, people can use Eta messaging app, one of the domestic messaging app. People outside the country, if they have Iranian phone number, they can make a call in Iran. But if they don't have Iranian phone number, they cannot make a call in Iran from outside. So it's very sophisticated in a way that gives them a lot of flexibility to how to run the network and how to disrupt the network, or even shutting it down.

I think I I think the concern also is if they're successful with this sophistication, you could have this could be a prolonged thing. Like, you know, there I think with some of these outages back in the early days of, like, Arab Spring, Egypt is a good example, they kinda can't go on like this. They have to finally turn things on even if they don't want to. But if you can come up come up with a way that, like, you're describing, like, white listing the things that you think are are approved by the government, then maybe someone could, you know, keep this this this block this level of blockage for a longer period of time. So before you finish that, the you mentioned that you think this is the the most severe Internet shutdown, and I've heard other people make that comment as well. I just wanna compare this to a couple other high watermarks to my knowledge.

You know, there there was the, you know, green revolution or whatever in two thousand was that eight, two thousand nine?

It was nine. Two thousand nine. And throttling there's a lot of throttling. Colin was big on trying to document that back then.

You know, the the next one that comes to mind is twenty nineteen, bloody November. So it's a couple of weeks of Internet shutdown. Of people hundreds of people were killed.

That's, in my mind, number one. So maybe we're maybe we're gonna surpass the impact of that one.

The fall of twenty twenty two was when the young woman was killed killed in custody for not wearing her head head covering correctly, and there was weeks of protest. Most of that was Internet curfew where and when there was a shutdown, there was also Internet curfew where they took down mobile service at night for a couple of weeks, and we wrote something up about that at the time.

And now we're here. I don't know if there's any other big ones I've missed here, but I think what makes this one bigger than or more severe than those other incidents?

So this one is very close to the one we call it Blood in November, right, twenty nineteen.

Because it's very much, at the beginning, remember we were talking about it, and at the beginning we were like, oh, this one is close to the twelve days war situation, but immediately situation changed. And now it's very close to that time. Because back then it was not just only shutting down the internet, it was also shutting down other communication means and tools like phone calls, text messages, all of these things. And now today, you cannot even make a phone call from outside the country into the country in Iran.

Was that possible in twenty nineteen?

I think so. I don't recall. If you make that phone call, you would hear some really weird pre recorded voice in English, which is a little bit weird. Why in English? Why are you assuming everyone called from outside in Iran, they would speak English?

And then we have a Starlink, right?

So back in November, blood in November, a Starlink was not a thing, right? So that's the difference. But during the mass army, Starlink was a thing.

During the war, Starlink was available also too, but we haven't seen any disruption on Starlink.

Now, what we are seeing is the Starlink also being disrupted. I have friend, some of them using a Starlink, some of them telling me they are seeing thirty percent packet loss. Some of them they're telling me they're seeing eighty percent packet loss on Starlink. So obviously there is some sort of strong jamming. I don't think this is the normal jamming. It's very much remind me what happened in Ukraine. It looks like this is electric warfare, Right?

Right.

This is not a normal kind of blockage. That's why I'm calling it this is this one is the worst.

Okay. Yeah. So I think yeah. You brought up Starlink, I think again, correct my timeline here if I I get this wrong.

But I think, again, in the the the protests and the shutdowns that took place in the fall of twenty twenty two, again, people are tweeting at Elon Musk, turn the service on, and he does. And, like and or, somebody does. The Starlink becomes operational. So just just a word about satellite Internet service.

So every Starlink wasn't the first to do Internet over over satellite. It is arguably technologically the most sophisticated and powerful, but there's been it's been around for decades in one form or another. Usually, the the providers have on their website an availability map that says what, you know, what parts of the world they can radiate in, and that is usually or provide service in, and that has to do with where they have frequencies allotted by the ITU. There's a process there to get approval usually by the you know, with cooperation with the with the government of the country.

And then also depending on the country, there's a lot of countries, a lot of different rules, but they may require a license from the telecom regulator to provide telecommunication services in that country.

And so then you end up with this patchwork. Everybody's got a patchwork. Starlink has a patchwork. They have their own availability map.

And and so in the case of Iran, you know, they they allowed the service to operate there.

The Iranian government has complained to the ITU, provided evidence that it's operational. They want it shut down. The ITU doesn't really have an enforcement mechanism. They just kind of relayed these on and just said, And they said, okay.

US and Norway is the other representative for Starlink. Like, you should tell Starlink to turn it off. And Starlink is kind of like, we're not doing any we're not changing anything. And so Great.

He does all.

It's it's kind of a you know, I I don't wanna be in a position of defending, you know, the Iranian government in this case for sure because this is a lifeline for a lot of people.

But anyway, so the so this has been I think I think it's what not widely understood that there are just thousands of operational Starlink links presently in Iran. That is not a fact. I think people generally understand, and there's lot of people relying on that as a way to communicate to the outside world. I didn't really know until, like, this past year the extent of that. I knew, you know, it's possible.

Of course, there's big risks like the government has the Iranian government has said that they you know, I I don't know what's they're gonna it's it's criminal to operate, you know, and so what what that means for you. According to new law, which was passed a couple of months ago, having a Starlink is equivalent of running espionage operation for Israeli.

Okay. That sounds pretty bad. So so to get so to get I mean, you have to get a terminal. You get the physical equipment in. There's smuggling that takes place, and so then these things might make make their way in.

The the global constellation will allow you to connect so you can serve you can get service. They don't show up on the availability map, but we all kinda know that's that's not a hundred percent accurate as far as a representation of where Starlink works and doesn't work.

But we are, I guess, pretty grateful that that service exists because people are this is how, Amir, you and some of the other colleagues are able to reach and get Yeah. Truth out of this country. Otherwise, there'd be no way, especially if they shut down the the voice lines. So so this is the worst because of the voice that that's that's it's never been a total Internet, total voice, you know, plain old telephone connection. That's that wholesale total communication blackout has never occurred as your No. Okay.

No. Not to this extent.

So now they're they're GMing potentially Starlink, which is kind of wild. So they've really taken it to that that level.

Yeah. I guess in the sequence of events yesterday that I was seeing so we saw all of the IPv six routes pulled.

It was morning my time in Yeah. It was east coast of the US. So we see in BGP, just there's no v six routes anymore. Having said that, I v six was only a small single digit percentage of traffic for Iran.

So it's maybe operationally to the average Iranian, they probably wouldn't have known that this took place, but they to us who are Internet watchers are like, oh, that's that looks that looks bad because that's you're you're completely severing something. You it doesn't you know, so it looked ominous. And sure enough, a few hours later, then we started seeing, like, this precipitous drop of traffic levels going into Iran all the way to the point where, whatever, eighteen hours ago or so, it went to near zero. We never kinda really completely reach zero.

There's always something a little trickling out, and and then we've kinda been in that state. And then today, we're seeing, like, little bits of things coming back and and your theory or maybe you've got this confirmed, Amir, is that this is part of the implementation of a of a white listing. So what are they what they gonna try to do? This allow just So certain websites or what?

Yeah, certain websites and websites and services, because so there are a couple of different things. One, the Iranian government is very sensitive about its image.

For them, I know when you look at it from outside, oh my God, they're killing people in the street. I mean, how are saying they're concerned about their own image? But for them, it's very important to put out their own narrative. It really doesn't matter if you buy it or not, but they have this kind of attitude.

It's very important for them to put out their own narrative. So in order to put out their own narrative, where they're gonna put it? On a state TV, nobody trusts state TV, but also there are people outside the country are important for them to see what's going on, right? So they need to enable their telegram channels, They need to enable their Eta channels.

They need to enable their websites, which publish in English news about what's going on in Iran. So they need to whitelist those things first for the purpose of having control over the narrative.

Okay, for propaganda.

Exactly, propaganda.

Second, still there is a government in place, and the government in place means you need to run a bureaucracy. And for the running of bureaucracy, you need to have your bank functioning, need to have your health system functioning, all of these things needs to be functioning, and they need to be connected somehow to the internet. Because even if you have the local network, still you need to connect to the internet. Maybe at least for updating your own server or something like that at minimum, right?

So you need to have some sort of connectivity outside the world. So that's another reason for whitelisting. And something that today came, which again, this was news. I haven't seen this in the past, that the Ministry of Intelligence, basically security service, sent mass text message to everyone in Iran, and told them, if you see someone who is have you seen these things in New York subway?

If you see something, say something. If you see someone who is doing XYZ, send us a message on ETA, on ballot, all of these domestic messaging app, or send us the information through our own website. So even for the intelligence gathering, you need to have some sort of connectivity, right? And that's another reason to white listing the thing.

Plus they have their own follower. They have people who are using something we call it white SIM card.

Have you heard white SIM Yeah, I've seen you use that term.

I don't know what it means. What does that mean?

So white SIM card basically means your SIM card, no filtering would be implemented on your SIM card if you are eligible.

How do you one of those?

Okay. That's also something, yes.

Okay, if it's sensitive, you don't need to tell me, I don't.

So you need vet it by the government, and the government trusts you to give you uncensored internet, something we call it white SIM card, right? And none of these white SIM card, they were connected to the internet. One of their main job is to go on Twitter and say, hey, everything is fine in Iran. There are a couple of terrorists killing people here and there, and the police is doing its own job.

In US, in Europe, everywhere police doing that, that's the kind of protection. So you need that propaganda arm. And that's why you're giving some of people this white SIM card on censored internet to put out the government narrative and the propaganda. So you need Internet.

If you want those army to go on Twitter, on other social media, you need some sort of connectivity.

Okay.

So as you mentioned at the beginning, we're we're in the middle of this. So the service is down. We saw some partial restorations to universities moments ago, although that seems to have ended maybe. So it's it's it's very much in flux. Everything's up in the air.

What do you think is gonna happen here? Like, I I is this are we reaching the end of this government, or is that too much to hope for?

Look.

Every every time there is a protest in Iran, there are people who call they're calling it revolution. And most of the time, almost every single time, I'm I always disagree with them. This is the only time I'm kind of agree with them. This is a revolutionary moment. But at the same time that I'm happy and excited, obviously I'm concerned about my fellow Iranian who are being killed or shot in the street, but at the same time, I'm happy because I think we have a real opportunity to make a better country. But at the same time, I'm deeply scared and concerned because I don't wanna see Iran become another Syria, which I think that's a possibility.

Also, I'm saying Like a post Assad Syria or with Assad Syria?

With Assad Syria, Assad did after the kind of civil war and things like And I think I'm optimistic that there are options that people can overthrow the government and keep the country united and not turn into a civil war.

I'm really, really optimistic.

But this is the Middle East. Look at Syria, look at Iran, look at Afghanistan, look at everywhere.

So anything in the Middle East is possible. We have this kind of expression that, not even in Iran, in the Middle East, we're saying, if you see a horror movie and you are scared, you never lived in Middle East.

So anything is possible. Anything is possible. But personally, I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful and I'm trusting my fellow Iranian citizen that they make the best decision. And hopefully, sometime soon, we can go back and live in our own country.

Okay. Well, I think we'll be you and I are gonna be trading notes probably the rest of today and the this weekend until this thing is resolved, which there's really no way of knowing how long this this this persists. But thanks so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts.

And, you know, I think a lot of people Thank you.

Thanks thanks to you. I know you work for a private company, not necessarily private company do the private, like, business, but this is what we need, that support you provide, we really, really appreciate it. I hope other big tech see how collaboration between civil society and private tech firm can actually enable people, makes their life better, and learn from this kind of collaboration. I I really appreciate that your help. Yeah.

I I I feel strongly about this. I mean, this is bigger than just this Iran issue, but, like, you know, we have the benefit in the tech the private, you know, tech Internet tech firm. We have a lot of data that is, you know, useful for things other than just, you know, monetization.

With that with not that much effort, we can help organizations like yours that help provide some insight into what's going on and so that, you know, we get some we get some marketing value out of that. But but I think at the end of the day, a lot of us personally, you know, wanna see wider Internet access and greater freedom in the world. So it's it's worth it. Yep.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Amir, and thank you, Doug, for joining us today and for your insight into the situation as it unfolds, of course, the historical context that you were able to provide.

And as this situation develops, we look forward to seeing your reports on social media, blog posts, podcasts in the coming days and weeks.

And to our audience, thanks so much for listening today. Bye bye.