After Iranians were cut off from the world for four days, the country’s nearly complete internet blackout was abruptly lifted late Friday for some Iranians, who managed to get access to weak connections by switching to different servers or perhaps through sheer luck.
But many said they thought the connections were temporary or unsafe, with the government still imposing tight restrictions that were difficult to bypass.
“It feels like we’re in a dark cave,” said Arta, an Iranian who fled Tehran on Tuesday and was able to briefly send a few messages over Instagram late Friday.
Like many others who have exchanged messages with The New York Times over the last week, he asked to be identified only by his first name to avoid scrutiny by the authorities.
“Even SMS texts don’t go through sometimes,” he said.
Many Iranians rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs, to evade government restrictions on the internet, but many of those services have been disrupted since Israel’s attacks began. On Saturday, as some connection returned, providers urged their users to act cautiously.
“For your own sake, don’t spread the link, the server will disconnect, and our work will only get harder,” one organizer wrote on a VPN provider’s Telegram channel. The organizer warned that reports of disconnection were increasing again, and asked subscribers to not share their product link because their server was overwhelmed.
Since at least Wednesday, the Iranian government has significantly restricted internet access across the country, with a government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, saying on Friday that the measures were taken because of “cyberattacks and security” reasons.
For Iranians abroad with loved ones in the country, the blackout has multiplied anxieties that were already high as news reports about Israeli evacuation orders and airstrikes rolled in.
Incoming international calls have also been blocked, forcing people in Iran to call their family and friends abroad directly. But making international calls from Iran means very high fees, which many in the country can’t afford.
Still, Iranians have sought creative ways around the restrictions.
On Thursday, during the height of the blackout, a group of Iranians managed to get online and speak with people outside the country through Clubhouse, an audio app that is popular in Iran. At one point, nearly 1,700 Iranians joined the call, hoping for help in reaching their loved ones.
For hours, Iranians abroad took turns sharing the names and numbers of their friends and relatives so that people inside Iran could connect them through Clubhouse.
“Dad? Can you hear me? Do you have insulin?” asked a woman who managed to get a hold of her elderly father when the organizers on Clubhouse dialed his number. “I went and bought it, don’t worry,” her father tried to reassure her.
“When you speak to Sanaz, tell her happy birthday for us,” another woman told her niece, who was in Canada. “Don’t cry, don’t worry about us,” the woman said, echoing what many Iranians in the country kept repeating to their nervous family members.
As Iranians abroad have tried to reach relatives, those inside the country have made a show of public solidarity since Israel’s attacks began last week.
Hotels and hostels have advertised free shelter. People in line for bread at a bakery shared what little of it remained, and others said they were feeding the stray cats still wandering Tehran. A father and daughter handed out drinks to people waiting in a long line for gas. Others delivered water to those stranded on the roads after their GPS-guided maps stopped working in the blackout.
A woman named Niloofar, who lives in a residential district of Tehran that Israel warned should be evacuated on Monday, said that many Iranians, despite their fears, had also expressed a determination to keep living as they always had.
“My sister and I tried so hard to get our parents to evacuate,” she said in a message on Telegram. But her mother was cooking olovieh, a classic Persian dish, “while my dad watched soccer,” she added. “At the end, they both refused to leave.”
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