Iran International
It is the Islamic Republic as envisioned by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: no internet, no social media, hundreds of national and local newspapers shuttered, and mobile phones rendered largely useless.
The darkness is deliberate. It is enforced to prevent protesters from communicating and organizing—and to conceal the crimes committed to crush them when they do.
Iran International on Tuesday put the death toll from the crackdown at around 12,000, vowing in a statement that the mass killing “will not be buried in silence.”
With nearly all communication channels severed, Khamenei remains one of the few figures whose website continues to function. State television—a network of more than 30 channels—is still broadcasting the image he wants the world to see.
The same is true of a handful of state-aligned news agencies, including Fars, Tasnim, and Mehr, all controlled by the Revolutionary Guards or the Organization for Islamic Propagation.
Although Iran’s national intranet has partially resumed after several days of shutdown, even state television has struggled to maintain its broadcasts following the severing of international internet links.
Despite those limitations, state TV aired footage promoting a tightly stage-managed pro-government rally in one of Tehran’s smallest squares, a space that can barely hold 3,000 people.
Internet experts say a small number of X users inside Iran have been selectively allowed to post content supporting government narratives. Limited Starlink access also exists, but analysts warn that the sporadic signal means foreign media remain largely blind to developments across most of the country.
As of Tuesday evening in Tehran, the government had not responded to calls from the United Nations secretary-general and European Union officials urging it to restore communication lines.
Meanwhile, social media posts describe security forces raiding homes and confiscating Starlink terminals, satellite dishes, computers, and mobile phones — part of a broader effort to prevent Iranians from accessing independent reporting or sending information abroad.
With the blackout, censorship, and signal jamming, foreign-based Persian-language media—now the primary source of information for many Iranians—may be forced to revive shortwave radio broadcasting. It would represent a step backward in media technology, but perhaps the only way to move forward in reaching a silenced population.
Shukriya Bradost, an Iran analyst based in Washington, wrote on X on Tuesday that while protesters stand “empty-handed against a regime that answers them with bullets,” no significant defections appear to have occurred within the military.
“Starlink and outside reporting no longer have the impact they once did,” she wrote, because the world already knows what is happening in Iran. If any action is to be taken, she concluded, “the time is now, not later.”
As nationwide protests continue, authorities have taken steps including staging government-organized countermarches, shutting down the internet, and tightening controls on the media to shape the narrative.
One clip aired by state media and presented as aerial helicopter footage of pro-government rallies in Tehran drew fresh questions after viewers pointed to anomalies, including wind visibly blowing the reporter’s hair while leaving his clothing and microphone seemingly unaffected.
IRIB News shared the video on X on Monday, writing: “Breaking | The first aerial video of the people of Tehran, the capital of Iran, marching in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been released.”
Readers added context on X saying the video appears to have been altered using chroma key (green screen), citing what they described as “unnatural subject edges, mismatched lighting and shadows, wind affecting only the reporter’s hair and not his clothing, a lack of realistic depth of field, and the absence of a seatbelt and headset," calling it a crude propaganda edit.
Multiple users also suggested the post showing large crowds appeared to recycle older material rather than depict new footage from the ongoing protests.
In a follow-up video, the reporter featured in the clip defended the broadcast footage as authentic. Some users, however, said they also saw inconsistencies in the new recording, and continued to question the original video’s provenance and how it was produced.
Separately, another image that circulated widely from the Monday rally showed demonstrators carrying a large Islamic Republic flag. In the photo, one person appears to be visibly inside the cloth, and some users pointed to irregularities in the flag’s details, including inconsistencies in the Arabic takbir rendered in white Kufic script along the edges of the green and red bands.
In another state-rally video, social media users focused on the color of trees in the background, arguing that the foliage appeared unusually vivid for mid-winter and did not match how Tehran’s street trees typically look at this time of year.
The government has a track record of recycling old footage and using AI-generated visuals, tactics that can help dominate the news cycle quickly.
In mid-2025, during a period of heightened regional conflict, state-run IRIB TV1 was shown in fact-check reports to have reused 2022 footage of Russian missile launches and presented it as Iranian strikes. State-run PressTV also published recycled images, including photos linked to a downed drone from the India-Pakistan border, which it labeled as an Israeli drone shot down over Iran.
State-affiliated social media accounts and some news broadcasts went further during the 12-day war with Israel, using high-fidelity graphics from the military simulator Arma 3 to claim “confirmed kills” of advanced fighter jets such as the F-35.
Such measures are framed by Iranian officials within the concept of soft war, an information and influence campaign in which the aim is not necessarily to persuade everyone indefinitely, but to create a temporary sense of superiority or confusion.
Iran has been under an almost complete internet blackout since January 8, when authorities largely cut off access amid nationwide protests, reducing connectivity to around 1 % of normal levels, according to internet monitoring group NetBlocks.
