At her studio in Iran’s capital, Amen Khademi prepared a fashion shoot for a jacket she designed with Persian-inspired motifs. But even as she applied lipstick to the model, she was distracted, worrying if her business would survive after four months without its main link to customers – the internet.
Iran’s 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s ...
This narrative presents a stark portrait of Iran’s internet shutdown as a catastrophic blow to its digital economy and civil society. The strongest version of this argument highlights the tangible human cost—businesses collapsing, jobs vanishing, and individuals reduced to street vending—while framing the shutdown as a deliberate, state-enforced regression to a controlled intranet. The emotional weight of personal stories, like the fashion designer’s inactive Instagram or the fitness coach’s dri...