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01 / 05
Iranians Could Have Internet Freedom—If the U.N. Got Out of the Way

Blog Post | Human Freedom

Iranians Could Have Internet Freedom—If the U.N. Got Out of the Way

The biggest obstacle to bringing internet freedom to Iran is not the practical but rather the arbitrary.

Summary: Iran’s authoritarian regime severely restricts internet freedom. However, many Iranians rely on the internet to express their dissent and demand their rights. This article argues that the U.N. should stop giving Iran a seat at the table of internet governance and instead support private sector initiatives that can bypass censorship and surveillance.


On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was arrested by members of the Iranian Morality Police as she exited a Tehran Metro station. Her alleged crime: allowing a few strands of her thick black hair to slip through her hijab. After three days in a detention center, Ms. Amini was transferred to a hospital and subsequently pronounced dead. While the exact circumstances of her death remain unclear, many believe she was murdered by Iranian authorities.

In a country where extrajudicial killings are the norm and government abuse of citizens is widespread, Amini’s death touched a nerve. Since then, the Iranian government has been brutal in its crackdown against protestors. Given that independent media is severely limited in Iran, exact death tolls are not available. Nevertheless, the human cost has been significant, with Amnesty International reporting that at least 82 protesters and bystanders were killed on September 30 alone in clashes with state police. Some commentators have downplayed the role of the internet in anti-authoritarian protest movements, stating that the role of social media has been overstated. Such analysis ignores the various uses of the internet, as well as changes in Iranian society. The story of internet access in Iran is not a story of the network’s failures. Rather, it is the story of arbitrary regulations hampering the progress of the private sector—and it should serve as a stark warning to Americans. 

In the summer of 2009, mass protests broke out across Iran in response to allegations that the presidential elections were rigged in favor of the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Millions mobilized in what became known as the Green Movement. While the protests were eventually suppressed by the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the internet played an important role in amassing support for the movement. Images of the shooting of 26-year-old protestor Neda Agha-Soltan circulated heavily on Twitter, inspiring others to join the protests. Protestors’ mutilated bodies served not to dissuade participants but instead compelled others to join, fueling a cycle of protest that Agha-Soltan’s killing had started. At the time, fewer than one million Iranians had access to smartphones. Thus, while the internet was important to the protest movements, its full potentially was hardly tapped. Yet the government sensed the power of the internet and instated a number of measures to disrupt internet freedom, including imposing severe content restrictions, hacking dissident websites, and abducting the operators of said websites.

Today, the role of the internet cannot be ignored. As of 2020, the share of Iranians who used the internet was estimated to be 84 percent—a dramatic increase from 2009, when internet penetration there stood at 14 percent. As the protests have evolved, the Iranian government has transitioned from a policy of intermittent internet stoppages to a complete shutdown. A common tactic of the regime is to leverage the ethnic and regional diversity of Iran. For example, in the 2011 anti-government protests, rural youths were brought to urban centers to savage protestors. The internet has served to disrupt that pattern and enable connections between the Baloch minority, the Kurdish minority, and ethnic Persians. Despite the significant economic and social impacts of the internet shutdown, the regime’s actions should come as no surprise to observers of Iran. Faced with the alternatives of ceding power or attempting to improve the lives of Iranians, Ali Khamenei and his sycophants have instead chosen to do neither. 

On September 23, 2022, the U.S government eased sanctions on Iran’s import of communication technologies, which theoretically would aid Iranian internet access. The effect has been minimal because these devices cannot operate without support infrastructure, such as the cellular towers that dot the United States. 

As is often the case, the private sector has stepped into the void. In September, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, offered to send his Starlink system to Iran. Starlink allows users to connect to the global internet through the use of a transmission system between low-flying satellites and a receiver. Because Starlink satellites orbit at a lower altitude than other communications satellites, the infrastructure required to receive their transmissions (and by extension to connect to the global internet) is much less extensive. Unlike conventional receivers, these receivers are highly mobile, weighing only around 15 pounds. Although the receivers must be placed in an open space to receive transmissions, this would present a relatively small challenge in a country as vast as Iran (compared with, say, North Korea). Although thousands of receivers would need to be smuggled into Iran for Starlink to be operational, the cost would be relatively minor, and Musk has signaled that he is open to financing the operation. 

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to bringing internet freedom to Iran is not the practical but rather the arbitrary. If Starlink were to be imported to Iran, Musk could face punishment from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a regulatory body of the United Nations. The ITU has strong backing from the Chinese Communist Party and other repressive states. According to ITU policy, if a private company provides internet to a country independent of regulations established by that country, the company exposes itself to punitive action from the ITU. Thus, the fact that the U.S. government has eased its own sanctions on Iranian telecommunications equipment has no effect on ITU regulations. 

This is a stinging indictment of the United Nations. Going forward, the United States should reconsider whether the United Nations serves to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,” as is stated in its charter, or is simply another bureaucracy that works to separate people from their inalienable rights. I know what my answer is.

Wall Street Journal | Housing

California Ditches Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis

“California lawmakers on Monday night rolled back one of the most stringent environmental laws in the country, after Gov. Gavin Newsom muscled through the effort in a dramatic move to combat the state’s affordability crisis.

The Democratic governor—widely viewed as a 2028 presidential contender—made passage of two bills addressing an acute housing shortage a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget. A cornerstone of the legislation reins in the California Environmental Quality Act, which for more than a half-century has been used by opponents to block almost any kind of development project…

The California Environmental Quality Act was signed into law in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, at a time when Republicans were at the forefront of the nation’s burgeoning green movement. President Richard Nixon also signed groundbreaking protections, including the Endangered Species Act.

CEQA, as it is known, requires state and local agencies to review environmental impacts of planned projects and to take action to avoid or lower any negative effects. Opponents of projects have used the law to delay them by years.”

From Wall Street Journal.

Axios | Infrastructure

NC Bill to Eliminate Parking Minimums Passes House

“The North Carolina House passed a bill unanimously Wednesday [6/26/25] that would block local governments from forcing developers to build parking.

Why it matters: An issue that has been controversial in Charlotte received bipartisan support in Raleigh.

The big picture: With a starting price tag of about $5,000 per space, parking mandates add to the rising costs of new construction. Those expenses are then passed on to residents and businesses as higher rent.”

From Axios.

New York Times | Energy Production

World Bank Ends Its Ban on Funding Nuclear Power Projects

“The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects.

The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil.

The ban has been formally in place since 2013, but the last time the bank funded a nuclear power project was 1959 in Italy. In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy, on the grounds that the risk of catastrophic accidents in poor countries with less expertise in nuclear technology was unacceptably high.

The bank’s policy shift, described in an email to employees late on Wednesday, comes as nuclear power is experiencing a global surge in support.

Casting nuclear power as an essential replacement for fossil fuels, more than 20 countries — including the United States, Canada, France and Ghana — signed a pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050 at the United Nations’ flagship climate conference two years ago.”

From New York Times.

The Verge | Food Production

Lab-Grown Salmon Gets FDA Approval

“The FDA has issued its first ever approval on a safety consultation for lab-grown fish. That makes Wildtype only the fourth company to get approval from the regulator to sell cell-cultivated animal products..

Wildtype salmon is now on the menu at Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon, and the company has opened a waitlist for the next five restaurants to stock the fish. It joins Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies with permission to sell cultivated chicken in the US, while Mission Barns has been cleared by the FDA but is awaiting USDA approval for its cultivated pork fat.”

From The Verge.