OE Watch Commentary: Even before Iran’s December 2017 unrest, Iranian officials sought to control and constrain the internet. For years, Iranian officials have debated creating a broad firewall around Iran and instead, construct a national intranet. The role of social media in catalyzing the spread of protests, however, has given new urgency to Iranian efforts to control online activity. The accompanying excerpted article from Mehr News Agency reports that earlier this year Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council announced government loans and subsidized bandwidth tariffs for five local apps, including Soroush, Wispi, Gap, iGap and BisPhone. Abolhasan Firuzabadi, the secretary of the Supreme Cyberspace Council, now claims that at least 12 million Iranians use a domestically-produced and operated messenger service, which is presumably meant to undercut the popularity of Western social media channels. This shows that the Iranian strategy has gained some traction, at least in some quarters; however, with 74 million cell phone subscribers inside Iran (roughly 91 out of 100 Iranians) and with more than 36 million internet users, even 12 million domestic messaging app users suggests the majority of Iranians still utilize non-domestic messaging apps. Telegram for example, which the Iranian government has struggled to shut down inside Iran, reportedly has 40 million users in the country. End OE Watch Commentary (Rubin)
[Abdolhasan] Firuzabadi added, “Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has been cooperating well with the implementation of this goal, and they have done what they were supposed to do.”
The secretary of the Supreme Cyberspace Council, noting that the Ministry of Communications had loaned five billion tomans to domestic messengers, said, “This ministry said there is no problem to achieve this, and they’re in the final stages of this field.” Firoozabadi added: “There are currently 12 to 13 million users of the domestic mobile messengers.”