Days after Russian clampdown, Iran signals that a ban of Telegram is imminent

The Iranian government appears to be preparing to institute a nationwide ban of Telegram, only days after Russia banned Telegram. Earlier this year, Iran temporarily banned Telegram and Instagram during widespread protests in January. Telegram — an encrypted messaging app that also features channels often used by official bodies like news organizations or even government entities — has 40 million users in Iran, a country where approximately 50 million people have internet access.

In a public announcement on Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said that government entities would no longer be using Telegram, in an effort to curb Telegram’s “monopoly.” As a testament to Telegram’s monopoly, Khamenei posted this message on his Telegram channel.

The Guardian reports that the announcement also says, “This move comes ahead of plans by the authorities to block Telegram and is aimed at supporting domestic social media apps.” Although the message appears to indicate an imminent ban, Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at Article 19 and a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute who studies the internet in Iran, says it’s not entirely clear that the Iranian government will actually move to shut it down.

Alimardani said it “definitely seems more likely than all the other times.” She has been following the situation closely for years, and although “it’s gone to deliberation at the filtering committee a handful of times since January 2015,” it hasn’t come to anything yet.

The Iranian government, she said, had been especially vocal in communicating that the ban in January 2018 was only temporary. “The [Rouhani administration] was elected on promises of more freedoms and access online, and the greatest achievement of this moderate administration was keeping Telegram unfiltered,” said Alimardani.

For now, the government is at the very least trying to migrate users away from Telegram and toward other local platforms, like iGap, Soroush, and Gap.

Meanwhile, Russia’s own Telegram ban has gotten off to a disastrous start, with the government blocking IPs belonging to US-based Google and Amazon cloud services, among others. As a result, millions of IP addresses have been impacted beyond Telegram. Whether Iran will take a similar route remains to be seen.



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