Leaked documents show Iran’s agriculture, communications, and industry ministries requested unlimited internet access in separate letters.
A letter from a government agency shows that the “classification of the internet in Iran” is expanding at an unprecedented rate. This means that access for the general public is very limited, but full access for officials.
In one of these letters, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture asked the Ministry of Communications to provide “free, unfiltered, high-speed” internet to some of the people named in the letter.
He also included his own phone number on the list and said one reason for the request was to “monitor the news in cyberspace.” The activities that ordinary people are deprived of due to the restrictions imposed on his networks and Farsi-language news websites based abroad.
In another letter, signed by Omid Qalibaf, an adviser to the minister and spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry, he sent a phone number to the Ministry of Communications asking him to enable unlimited internet on his mobile phone.
On the same day, Mohammad Ethan Haramid, head of the Communications Ministry’s Public Relations Center, wrote to the National Cyberspace Center, requesting that it allow an unlimited “journalist internet” for attached phone numbers.
Journalists close to the administration have been allowed unrestricted access to the internet since 2016, but the government has filtered more apps and websites during protests in recent months.
