Iran president’s son urges authorities to restore internet after protests blackout | Iran

The son of Iran’s president has called for the removal of internet restrictions in the country, saying nothing can be solved by trying to delay the moment when images and videos of protests that have been violently suppressed by the regime begin to circulate.

As a fight continues at the top of the regime over the political risks of continuing to block Iran’s internet access, Yousef Pezeshkian, whose father Masoud was elected in the summer of 2024, said continuing the digital shutdown would create dissatisfaction and widen the gap between the population and the government.

“This means that those who are dissatisfied and dissatisfied will be added to the dissatisfied list,” he wrote in a post on Telegram. Yousef Pezeshkian added that the release of videos showing the violence of the protests is “something we will have to confront sooner or later.” “Shutting down the internet won’t solve anything, we’ll just postpone the problem.”

The sporadic lifting of restrictions leads to a slow and painful investigation into how many protesters, including children, died. Authorities launched a violent crackdown under the pretext of an internet blackout, and rights groups documented several thousand deaths. Norway-based non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights says the final figure could be as high as 25,000. Thousands of people are still detained.

While pictures of most of the dead children appeared on websites in Iran, Dr. Farabi eye hospital director in Tehran. Ghasem Fakhraei said staff at the specialist ophthalmology center have operated on more than 1,000 patients requiring emergency eye surgery since the protests. He said hospital wards were overflowing.

Molavi Abdulhamid, a prominent Sunni cleric and outspoken Friday prayer imam in Zahedan, southeastern Iran, described the violent killings of protesters in January as an “organized massacre.”

Government adviser Yousef Pezeshkian said the risk of keeping Iran off the internet was greater than the risk of a return to protests if connectivity was restored. He said that security institutions should ensure security with the existence of the internet, which he described as a necessity in life.

Echoing his father’s comments, Pezeshkian said the protests only turned violent because of professionally trained groups linked to foreigners, but added: “Security and law enforcement may have made mistakes, by the way, and no one will defend what was wrong, and this needs to be addressed.”

Iranian journalists were reporting open disagreement with the government over whether it was safe to loosen up the internet; The president and communications minister Sattar Hashemi supported the move, but the head of the supreme national security council, Ali Larijani, opposed the measure.

While the Tehran stock market was in the red for the fourth day in a row on Sunday, one of the reasons for the protests was that the Iranian currency, the rial, continued to lose value against the dollar. The Central Bank of Iran said the debt issue was only 15% subscribed; This is a development that would require further cuts in government spending or lead to an increase in inflation, whose official interest rate was above 42% last month.

Although stores have opened, even newspapers close to the security services admit that trade is low.

Iran’s computer trade organization said the internet shutdown was costing $20 million (£15 million) a day, while truck drivers found it difficult to cross borders due to a lack of electronic documentation.

One frustrated trader said they were given 20 minutes of supervised internet access a day, enough time to answer a small number of emails but not enough to run their business.

With the limited lifting of restrictions, it is now possible to see pressure being put on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) narrative that the death toll was so high only due to the subversive activities of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the reformist former mayor of Tehran, said: “People are shocked and confused… If the agents of Mossad and foreign countries are at work, how did they suddenly inflict these disasters on the whole country? Where did they come from?”

He condemned the Pezeshkian administration’s failure to improve the economy. Karbaschi said, “The government in Iran is losing its original meaning. It cannot be said that the government is active, present and solving problems in any field. All forces in the country, except the government, are active and doing what they want. This government does not show power in any field.”

Some of the protesters contacted by the Guardian in Iran accused Donald Trump of failing to provide the aid he promised.

“He betrayed us,” one said. “Trump is more hateful to me than a religious leader [Ayatollah Ali] Because the ideology of Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is clear. Trump promised and continued to promise that he would shoot the person who shot you. Trump is one of the most despicable leaders the world has ever seen.”

Another said: “Bodies intact but hearts and minds shattered. For a moment you’re happy to finally have access to the internet. Then instantly guilt hits you; how happy are you about that? Why are you still breathing you useless human?”

They added: “We really feel sorry for ourselves because, first, there is no God. Second, we are so miserable that we can’t wait for another country to attack our country, hoping that it will save us. And even then, there is no guarantee that it will happen.”