Two-minute read
On July 15, 2025, the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, chaired by Iranian regime president Masoud Pezeshkian, approved a policy to implement a “tiered internet.” This system creates a digital caste system, granting privileged, unfiltered access to regime loyalists while condemning the general public to a heavily censored and monitored national network. The move reveals the unchangeable nature of the theocratic regime, where the president is merely an executor of the Supreme Leader’s repressive agenda, and “reform” is a tool to absorb public discontent, not enact meaningful change.
The regime’s attempts to justify the policy have been marked by a series of blatant contradictions. After the plan’s approval, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani insisted on social media that the new regulation “has no connection with restricting the internet.” Yet, she had previously admitted that certain groups require special treatment, stating, “Naturally, if a journalist needs a freer internet, it should be given to them.”
Pezeshkian himself echoed this disingenuous rhetoric, posting that “access to free information is the right of all people, not just a specific class.” This statement came after his administration approved the very plan that codifies such a class-based system, a policy first test-driven during the bloody crackdown on the November 2019 protests.
#Iran’s Digital Apartheid: Regime Loyalists Flood the #Internet While the Rest of the Nation Goes Darkhttps://t.co/qFQw7Bi9wc
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 20, 2025
A Tool for Control and Corruption
The tiered internet is designed not for economic “facilitation” but for political control. By creating a system where access is a privilege granted by security agencies, the regime can reward its propagandists, monitor dissenters, and cripple the online economy for ordinary citizens. This was seen during the recent 12-day war, when those with privileged access disseminated the state’s narrative while the rest of the country was in a blackout. This system also institutionalizes corruption, creating a new market for the regime to sell access, further enriching its cronies.
The policy has provoked a furious backlash from Iranian civil society. In Tehran, the state-affiliated outlet Eghtesad 24 took the extraordinary step of warning that the discriminatory plan could lead to a “social explosion.”
This internal admission highlights the regime’s deep-seated fear of public rage. Critics also noted the hypocrisy of the so-called “reformists,” with programmer Vahid Farid pointing out that the two most severe internet blackouts—in November 2019 and during the recent 12-day war—both occurred under “reformist” administrations.
#Iran Teeters Toward Full Internet Blackout Amid Rising Tensionshttps://t.co/Zaesm5Hu0Q
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 18, 2025
Closing the Last Escape Route
To ensure its digital prison is inescapable, the regime is simultaneously waging war on Starlink, the satellite internet service that offers a lifeline to the outside world. On June 22, the regime filed a formal complaint with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) against Starlink for operating “illegally.” This was followed by the parliament passing a law that criminalizes the use, sale, or possession of Starlink equipment, with penalties of up to two years in prison. The regime is systematically sealing every crack in its wall of censorship, fully aware that its survival depends on isolating the Iranian people from the free flow of information.
The “Tiered Internet” policy is not a technical adjustment; it is a strategic act of repression by a regime terrified of its own population. Combined with the aggressive crackdown on alternatives like Starlink, it exposes a government whose primary function is to suppress its citizens. These are not the actions of a confident government, but the desperate maneuvers of a decaying regime building a digital prison to delay its inevitable reckoning with a nation that yearns for freedom.