Apparently there have been IRGC and basij curfew patrols shooting at buildings / windows of people who sing or shout anti regime songs and slogans.
Apparently they are also (at least in some cases) dressing as women to avoid airstrikes.
There has been very little photage and info coming out of Iran though.
I still believe the Iranian government is more afraid of it's people than of the US and Israel - the US and Israel can bomb leadership and materiel, but without ground troops, regime capitulation is unlikely, unless the populace can themselves overthrow the govt (though that is hard to do when there is a major imbalance in who has guns).
This is all likely true. Although I feel people undersell how they work together.
Iranians broadly hate their government, yeah. But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Social media is swarmed by people saying it’ll be like Iraq and Iranians will hate the US for its actions. I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I think we could see regime change within a decade.
Why wont a general strike work? Not enough support? People have never had freedom, so dont understand they have 100% ability to bring down govt if they wanted?
Looking at it from an alternative angle, the Iranians are not stupid.
They know leaving the internet online would be beneficial for their adversaries, perhaps especially as Israel is one of them, and Israel's use of cyber is no secret.
So by killing the internet, they have an instant air-gap firewall.
Making the most of the levers they have fighting asymmetric warfare.
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0].
Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [8], and China [8].
Iran also uses a two-tier SIM card system - ideologically vetted individuals get a "white" SIM which gives full ingress/egress outside the NIN and others have a normal SIM that can be blacklisted from egressing outside the NIN.
Notice how Iranian websites have a page saying "Transferring to Website" - that's the gateway page for the NIN.
Iran has been under export controls for dual use technology for decades. Getting the amount of GPUs needed to conduct bitcoin mining was nigh impossible.
Bitcoin and Crypto as a shadow financial system was enabled by Qatar and the UAE where there are dedicated deal desks that work on ExAmerica trades.
This is why the IRGC striking Qatar and the UAE was such a bad move. Even companies in the PRC try to follow American sanctions regimes because trade with Japan+SK+ASEAN is higher priority than trade with Russia or Iran.
Starlink or any other sort of satellite internet, but these are relatively easy to jam and detect. There are ways to minimize that but obviously not available to civilians.
The issue is, if you control the Network DMZ, it's extremely difficult to bypass. In Xinjiang and Tibet (which has a similar setup) they used to use smuggled Kazakh, Nepali, and Indian SIM cards but that was cracked down.
A lot of the info from inside Iran that is not regime connected is coming from areas in Iranian Kurdistan where an Iraqi SIM could be smuggled or accessed somewhat easier than other areas.
P2P is only as safe as it's nodes. Iran has around 1 million IRGC, Army, and Foreign Shia Militia deployed in a country of around 90 million.
Mind you that organization has been severely degraded, but that only scares civilians even more as functionaries are much more trigger happy (rape [0], summary execution [1], torture [2] are already the norm).
and during that time those people waging war against Iran, murdered one Irainian child every 30 minuits, not counting the other children murdered by the genociders in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
predictable down vote
but listen up, Iran has made a tactical move in this, but the implication is that
they, like Afganistan are consideriing a strategic move, and many others are watching.
more down voting, which is an excellent demonstration of how the internet is used
by those that "own" it
I still believe the Iranian government is more afraid of it's people than of the US and Israel - the US and Israel can bomb leadership and materiel, but without ground troops, regime capitulation is unlikely, unless the populace can themselves overthrow the govt (though that is hard to do when there is a major imbalance in who has guns).
Iranians broadly hate their government, yeah. But the thing that gets them rioting is economic failure. Which the strikes have exacerbated.
Social media is swarmed by people saying it’ll be like Iraq and Iranians will hate the US for its actions. I’m not convinced. My small anecdata of Iranian friends with contacts in Iran agrees with me.
I think we could see regime change within a decade.
Essentially, they’ve created a two-tier system controlling who can access the internet.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_SIM_Card
Erm, dude, you did look at the graph on the Mastodon post linked to, right ?
You see that bit where it falls off a cliff to 0% netblocks ?
"white SIM card" or not, you're not getting internet if there's no BGP routes being announced.
The only way around 0 BGP announcements would be satellite...
I suspect your "white SIM card" was a pre-war status-quo ...
Not sure if we're all looking at the same plot, but I see things hovering above zero, not exactly at zero.
They know leaving the internet online would be beneficial for their adversaries, perhaps especially as Israel is one of them, and Israel's use of cyber is no secret.
So by killing the internet, they have an instant air-gap firewall.
Making the most of the levers they have fighting asymmetric warfare.
I mean, sure. But then being at war is also economically harmful. :)
Of course information does still get in and out, but that is severely throttled
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0]. Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], South Africa [4], Venezuela [5], Russia [8], and China [8].
Iran also uses a two-tier SIM card system - ideologically vetted individuals get a "white" SIM which gives full ingress/egress outside the NIN and others have a normal SIM that can be blacklisted from egressing outside the NIN.
Notice how Iranian websites have a page saying "Transferring to Website" - that's the gateway page for the NIN.
[0] - https://citizenlab.ca/irans-national-information-network/
[1] - https://www.arvancloud.ir/fa
[2] - https://tvbrics.com/en/news/uganda-and-iran-to-boost-ict-co-...
[3] - https://mail.techreviewafrica.com/public/news/1361/kenya-and...
[4] - https://www.samenacouncil.org/samena_daily_news?news=64545
[5] - https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/08/06/752585/Iranian-fibe...
[6] - https://zmc.co.ir/
[7] - https://www.rayafiber.com/en/home
[8] - https://www.kharon.com/brief/iran-sanctions-maximum-pressure...
Bitcoin and Crypto as a shadow financial system was enabled by Qatar and the UAE where there are dedicated deal desks that work on ExAmerica trades.
This is why the IRGC striking Qatar and the UAE was such a bad move. Even companies in the PRC try to follow American sanctions regimes because trade with Japan+SK+ASEAN is higher priority than trade with Russia or Iran.
The issue is, if you control the Network DMZ, it's extremely difficult to bypass. In Xinjiang and Tibet (which has a similar setup) they used to use smuggled Kazakh, Nepali, and Indian SIM cards but that was cracked down.
A lot of the info from inside Iran that is not regime connected is coming from areas in Iranian Kurdistan where an Iraqi SIM could be smuggled or accessed somewhat easier than other areas.
Mind you that organization has been severely degraded, but that only scares civilians even more as functionaries are much more trigger happy (rape [0], summary execution [1], torture [2] are already the norm).
That makes covert P2P much harder.
[0] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...
[1] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-authorit...
[2] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/0673/2026/en/
predictable down vote
but listen up, Iran has made a tactical move in this, but the implication is that they, like Afganistan are consideriing a strategic move, and many others are watching.
more down voting, which is an excellent demonstration of how the internet is used by those that "own" it