At her studio in Tehran, fashion designer Amen Khademi prepared a shoot for a jacket with Persian motifs, but her mind was elsewhere. After four months without internet, her business has lost its main link to customers. Iran's 90 million people have been cut off from the global web for most of 2026, one of the longest and strictest national shutdowns in the world.
Economic Toll of the Shutdown
The shutdown is devastating an online economy that had long defied government restrictions and international sanctions. From fashion to fitness, advertising to retail, many have seen incomes evaporate. Khademi hasn't made a sale in months. "The internet outage in the past four months has completely destroyed not only my business, but many online businesses," she said.
Despite an uneasy truce with the US and Israel, Iran's rulers refuse to reverse the shutdown, calling it a wartime necessity. However, they face outcry as it adds to mass job losses from strikes on key industries and an ongoing US blockade. Before January, Iranians could access the internet, though with heavy content filtering. Now, all access to the global web is shut down. Workarounds exist but are prohibitively expensive for most.
The internet cutoff costs the economy an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely double that, according to Afshin Kolahi of Iran's Chamber of Commerce. About 10 million people have internet-dependent jobs, per Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.
Impact on Digital Economy
Throughout years of economic turmoil from sanctions and mismanagement, platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp helped small businesses find customers and people earn extra income. Authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass protests, then imposed a complete blackout on February 28 when the US and Israel launched the war.
Mahsa Alimardani, an expert on internet censorship, noted that while Kashmir and Myanmar had longer blocks on specific regions or platforms, and China and North Korea always restrict access, "What makes Iran's shutdown unprecedented is the combination of scale and severity: an entire country of 90 million people with a developed digital economy deliberately reverted to a controlled national intranet."
Online retailer DigiKala recently laid off 200 people, about 3% of its workforce. The pain extends to production, foreign trade, and traditional business, said Reza Olfatnasab, head of a national digital business group.
Personal Stories of Struggle
Khademi's shopfront is Instagram, but her studio's page with over 30,000 followers is inactive. She did the photo shoot to save pictures for later. Her model, Farnaz Ojaghloo, is also a fitness coach; the shutdown dried up her modeling gigs and online courses. "Psychologically, it really hits hard," Ojaghloo said. "All the plans you had for six months or a year ahead get pushed aside, and your only concern becomes surviving in the moment."
For years, Iranians bypassed filters with cheap VPNs. Now, black-market VPNs are expensive. State media report arrests for using illegal VPNs or Starlink. Senior officials get "white" SIM cards for global internet access. Under pressure, the government allows less-restricted access to some professions, but an e-commerce trade group condemned the tiered system as "an abuse of an obvious need of every citizen."
Most people must use Iran's national net, which a gamer from Isfahan called "terrible"—slow, insecure, full of bugs. He lost almost all income from sponsors and donations. Iran's domestic social media platforms are monitored and censored. "Nobody really wants to use these platforms, but there is no other option," he said.
Rising Street Vendors
The shutdown pressures Iran's middle class, already struggling with a prewar currency crash. Economic decline sparked protests in December. More Iranians now think of emigrating, said a software developer who lost his job when his company laid off almost all employees. Street peddlers are increasing in Tehran.
Reza Amiri, 32, a former internet provider employee, now sells hats and umbrellas by a metro stop. Monireh Pishgahi, who sells ornaments on Vali Asr Street, shut her tailoring business and laid off five employees. Shopkeeper Mohammad Rihai said he gave up trying to stop street vendors blocking his sidewalk: "After the war, you see them all along the sidewalk. I cannot fight them anymore."
