Iran Internet Blackout Deepens, Disrupts Even State Media: Watchdog

TEHRAN, Mar 15: An internet monitoring group has reported a significant deepening of Iran’s internet blackout, disrupting connectivity across the country and affecting even semi-official news organizations. NetBlocks said connectivity across Iran rapidly collapsed around 12:00 p.m. UTC on Sunday. Founder Alp Toker told The Associated Press that the disruption caused a sharp decline in internet access nationwide.

The outage also appeared to affect the social media activity of several Iranian state-linked outlets, including Fars News Agency, whose accounts on X abruptly stopped updating around the same time the disruption was detected.

NetBlocks said this is the first internet shutdown of such scale during the ongoing conflict that began on Feb. 28 and is now entering its third week. However, the group noted that similar large-scale connectivity disruptions were observed during Iran’s January protests in previous years.

Although internet access for the public has been heavily restricted since the conflict began, many Iranians had continued to connect using VPN services or satellite links such as Starlink. The latest disruption appears to have affected many of those alternative routes, leaving significantly fewer users able to get online.