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The secret Iran war — suppressed by the regime, behind Internet walls

For 55 days and counting, the Islamic Republic of Iran has kept 92 million people offline.

The blackout that began on Feb. 28 with the onset of Operation Epic Fury is now the longest nationwide Internet shutdown in recorded history: over 1,296 hours of forced darkness.

Tehran’s own communications minister admits that the shutdown is bleeding the economy of roughly $35 million daily. NetBlocks puts total losses at nearly $2 billion. Meanwhile, 80 percent of online sales have vanished, and small businesses are going bankrupt by the hour.

A regime that has told its people for 47 years that the enemy is outside the country is now helping to further tank its own economy to keep people from talking to each other.

The Islamic Republic has always had one true Achilles’ heel, and it is not Israeli jets or American sanctions. It is the Iranian street.

The ayatollahs understand this in their bones because they came to power the same way.

In 1979, the revolution that carried Khomeini from exile in Paris to power in Tehran began with smuggled cassette tapes, bazaar merchants closing their shutters, university students pouring into streets, and ordinary Iranians contesting the Shah’s security apparatus.

The men now clinging to power in Tehran know exactly how a regime falls because they wrote the........

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