Iran expands tiered internet access amid continued online blackout

Tehran, Iran – Iran is looking at ways of providing limited connectivity to approved individuals and entities amid a continued state-imposed internet shutdown, with a tiered access model currently being offered that experts have said still undermines the digital rights of Iranians. President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday announced the creation of a new entity to review internet coverage in the country named the Specialised Headquarters for Organising and Guiding Iran’s Cyberspace, with First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, a relative moderate, appointed as its head. Pezeshkian said he expects the 74-year-old vice president to “create institutional cohesion and align policies and measures by relevant bodies” and “prevent parallel work and end multiple voices in the management of the country’s cyberspace”, referring to the multiple bodies overseeing communications in Iran. Reza Aref is also expected to devise and enforce a roadmap to “overhaul cyberspace governance”, and perhaps most importantly, to review the efficiency of the secretariat of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and its subsidiary, the National Cyberspace Center. The council, which Pezeshkian has now said he wants to reform, is a powerful state body established by slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2012 to govern the internet landscape in Iran. …