57 days offline: Iran faces longest nationwide internet shutdown

Tehran: Citizens in Iran have been subjected to a continuous internet blackout for 57 days, marking exactly eight weeks since the Iranian regime severed the country's digital access, according to the internet monitoring watchdog NetBlocks.

Reporting on the situation this Saturday, the watchdog highlighted the severe impact of the restriction, stating that "the disruption, now entering its 57th day after 1344 hours, stifles the voices of Iranians, leaves friends and family out of touch and damages the economy."

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The total blackout was implemented immediately following the joint US and Israeli strikes on Tehran on 28 February. This prolonged shutdown has isolated the Iranian population from the global community during a period of significant regional instability.

Earlier this month, NetBlocks identified the ongoing crisis as the "longest nation-scale internet shutdown on record in any country." The scale of this disruption surpasses previous state-led efforts to control the flow of information.

This current restriction follows a separate internet and communications blackout imposed by the Iranian regime in January, which was allegedly used to obscure evidence of the state's deadliest crackdown on its own citizens since the Islamic Republic was founded nearly 47 years ago.