Iran International
The comment section under an Iran post can look like a national mood but under a blackout well into its third month, it is often something narrower: a space shaped by whitelisted access, economic privilege, cyber operations and fear.
Iran’s streets and comment sections increasingly project the same official mood: unity, defiance and loyalty. Nighttime rallies supply the images – flags, portraits, organized crowds. Online, many Iran-related posts draw a parallel chorus of praise for the Islamic Republic, celebration of its military posture and attacks on critics, often alongside tributes to slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his still-unseen successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.
What the screen does not show is the pool of people removed before the argument even begins.
As Iran’s internet blackout pushes deeper into its third month, the question is no longer only what people are saying online.
It is who still has the connection, the permission, the protection or the incentive to say it.
The latest crisis did not begin with one switch. During the January uprising, internet access was cut on January 8 and remained fully restricted until January 28. After US-Israeli strikes began on February 28, authorities imposed a new shutdown that has now moved toward its third month.
A normal comment section, however flawed, allows some collision between competing voices. A blackout changes the sample.
Many ordinary users are pushed onto restricted domestic services. Others ration expensive workarounds. Some businesses cannot reach customers. Students lose access to material. Families abroad struggle to maintain daily contact. At the same time, state-aligned users, approved institutions and privileged accounts remain visible on global platforms.
The asymmetry has not been hidden. In March, Iran’s government said it was providing special internet access to select users capable of promoting its messaging online. A government spokeswoman did not use the term “white SIM cards,” but said connectivity was being offered to “those who can better deliver the message.”
That is the controlled sample: not a country speaking freely, but a narrower population still able to speak outward.
The most revealing development is not only who receives access. It is what some people are asked to do to regain it.
Some Iranians whose SIM cards or internet access had been blocked over alleged online activity against the Islamic Republic said they were told to submit handwritten pledges, provide guarantors and publish pro-government content to restore access.
The notices asked for home and work addresses, bank account information, images of bank cards and links to social media accounts. They also instructed recipients not to publish content deemed harmful to the country’s “psychological, social or political security.”
Some were told to publish at least 20 posts supporting the Islamic Republic and send screenshots as proof.
The posts were not to be uploaded all at once. They had to be spaced out so the activity would appear natural.
Others were ordered to attend nighttime government rallies, photograph themselves carrying flags or images of the Supreme Leader, and provide identification documents from guarantors who would accept responsibility for any future “criminal activity.”
The detail about timing is small, but it carries the whole design. The aim is not merely loyalty. It is loyalty made to look organic.
This is where the street and the screen meet. Organized rallies produce images of public unity. Selective internet access and coerced posting can carry the same choreography into comment sections, reply chains and social platforms.
The state does not need every supportive post to be fake. It needs a system in which supportive voices are easier to see, dissenting voices are harder to hear, and some frightened users learn that getting back online may require a public performance of loyalty.
Iran’s internet is no longer simply available or unavailable. It has been sorted.
At the top are so-called white SIM cards, widely understood as privileged lines that allow largely unrestricted access for trusted insiders and state-aligned users. Below them are paid and limited services such as “Internet Pro,” presented by officials as a business necessity but described by many Iranians as a class-based system of digital inequality.
Reporting on material circulating among users described a four-level structure: white SIM cards, paid Internet Pro, costly VPN access and, for the majority, a restricted domestic network.
The economic filter is severe. Average monthly income in Iran is at around $100 to $200, while the minimum wage is typically below $100. Even official Internet Pro packages and VPN routes can be unaffordable, and black-market access has reportedly pushed prices far higher.
Access also carries political exposure. For those who can afford a connection, the risk is not only cost but traceability. A user may be able to post, but with the knowledge that the same system can block a SIM card, summon a guarantor, demand a pledge or turn an online comment into a legal file.
Iranian state-linked online influence operations long predate the current blackout. Microsoft has reported that Iranian cyber-enabled influence activity has been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles.
In January, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies identified what it described as a likely regime-linked influence operation on X during protests, using coordinated accounts to delegitimize dissent, intimidate protesters and reinforce official narratives.
The report said the network included at least 289 accounts posting identical Persian-language content, with behavior suggesting a hybrid of automation and human operation.
But the current phase adds a more intimate layer. Foreign influence operations impersonate a public from a distance. Domestic coercion can pressure the public itself.
The old shorthand of “bots” misses the range of actors now shaping the visible online picture: automated accounts, organized cyber operators, loyalists with privileged access, state-linked media networks, paid voices, and users pushed to perform approval to recover ordinary tools of daily life.
The missing side of Iran’s online debate is not abstract.
It is the online seller without customers, the student without class materials, the programmer without contracts, the family unable to make a routine call abroad, and the person with disabilities cut off from services or communities that made daily life more manageable.
Against that background, pro-government comment floods do not prove a national mood. They show that some people still have access, some have protection, some have instructions, and many others have been priced out, cut off or made cautious by fear.
There are genuine supporters of the Islamic Republic. But a system that restricts millions, grants selective access, monitors users, blocks SIM cards and tells some people to space out loyalty posts cannot produce a clean reading of public opinion.
When a government cuts off the people and leaves the microphone to loyalists, the comment section stops being a public square.
It becomes part of the stage.
The real story is not only in the roar under the post. It is in the conditions that made so many others unable to answer back – and in the citizens told that to return to the internet, they must first praise the power that cut them off.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
