Iran’s internet blackout could worsen human toll of war, say rights groups

Experts say government’s shutdown means civilians are not seeing evacuation warnings before bombs hit

As US and Israeli bombs continue to rain down on Iran, civilians are enduring the bombardment in the dark – cut off from comprehensive information about where strikes have happened, which medical facilities are affected and where new rounds of bombings are about to occur.

As state media broadcasts limited or contradictory information about airstrikes, and evacuation orders from the attacking countries remain invisible to most civilians, the internet shutdown risks worsening the human toll of the war, human rights groups say.

The Guardian was able to speak to a small number of Iranians in the country who could briefly connect via VPNs or Starlink terminals. “Information barely gets through,” said Ali*, based in Tehran. “If there’s no internet, we know absolutely nothing. Not about other cities, not even about what’s happening a few streets away.”

“There’s this belief going around that this time only military bases are being targeted, not residential areas,” Ali said. “I honestly don’t know how true that is. I doubt it.”

Hours after the US-Israeli attack began on Saturday, Iran was plunged into a near-complete internet shutdown, which has now lasted over 100 hours, according to Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. Iran’s internet traffic was “around 1% of ordinary levels,” the internet freedom monitor NetBlocks said on Thursday. External data suggests that while some infrastructure has been damaged, the shutdown itself is government-initiated. The current blackout is less absolute than the government’s January shutdown during nationwide protests – domestic internet and internal mobile phone networks appear to be at least partly operational. However, many Iranians remain almost completely cut off from the outside world.

That means that while the IDF has been posting evacuation “warnings” on its social media channels about civilian areas in Iran it is preparing to bomb, experts said they were almost certainly not reaching most of the civilians in those zones. The IDF had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

An Iranian source in a northern city, who was able to connect to the internet for just a few minutes before being cut off, said there were no warnings about airstrikes getting through.

Researchers at Project Ainita and the Outline Foundation said that it was unlikely the warnings were reaching most civilians at all, and those that did would probably not arrive in time for people to evacuate, given that many Iranian bases are in urban areas.

Fereidoon Bashar, executive director of ASL19, a digital rights and media organisation focused on Iran, said there were “a limited number of people” who would be likely to be able to see evacuation or bombing warnings – those with access to Starlink terminals and certain people the government has allowed access to the internet, including some state media sites. “There’s a very small circle of news and state organisations who have unfettered access right now,” he said.

While Iranian state media is heavily documenting some strikes on civilian sites, such as the Minab primary school, in other areas it was either not reporting strikes, or contradicting warnings that places were coming under bombardment, Bashar said. One post, from the state-affiliated Tasmin news channel, described an evacuation warning for one city as “psychological operations by enemies” and “urged the public to ignore such rumours”.

Another post by the media outlet reads: “Continuing the enemy’s psychological operations to evacuate border cities, this time the evacuation of several Marivan neighbourhoods was announced by hostile elements. City officials denied this news … and announced that no decision has been made to evacuate the neighbourhoods, that the city is in complete security”. According to the human rights group Hengaw, the US and Israel have carried out heavy airstrikes on military and security sites in Marivan.

Bashar said it was “alarming to see reporting and narratives being pushed through these channels trying to portray that cities and certain areas are safe and that life is continuing as normal”.

A number of US-Israeli strikes have hit civilian sites – including residential buildings around Tehran and the capital’s Gandhi hospital, which was damaged when an adjacent state television broadcast tower was bombed. On Wednesday, Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, listed 33 civilian sites that he said had been hit or damaged, including schools, hospitals, or markets. The worst mass casualty event of the war so far is the strike on the Minab primary school, in which at least 168 people, mostly young children, were reported dead. Health infrastructure is also under fire. According to the International Federation of the Red Crescent, seven of their bases and branches had been damaged in the bombing, as well as three rescue vehicles and 14 medical and pharmaceutical centres.

Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been documenting civilian casualties in the war, said in a statement the shutdown was already affecting Iranians’ ability to get access to information, organise humanitarian operations or check on their families. “During military attacks, a nationwide internet disruption is not merely a technical issue – it directly affects the flow of information, the ability to conduct field verification, citizens’ access to safety information, and communication among families,” it said. “Transparency and access to information are essential for civilian protection and the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance,” it added, saying Iran’s government had an “obligation under human rights law to ensure access to information”. The shutdown is also hampering attempts to document and verify the full human toll of the US-led war so far. According to HRANA, the number of reported civilian deaths as of 4 March stood at 1,114, including 181 children.

For Iranians under bombardment, the situation was “awful,” Ali said. “No one knows when the war will end. There’s this constant anxiety: what if it doesn’t end?”

* Names have been changed