In recent weeks, the Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced one of its most intense moments of social mobilization since the 1979 revolution. An outbreak that was born as a protest against a deep economic crisis—including the depreciation of the rial, the fall in purchasing power and uncontrolled inflation—was transformed into a direct political challenge to the clerical establishment and to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The authorities responded with a combination of lethal violence, total internet shutdown and information censorship that remembers what happened and continues to happen in Venezuela.
In Iran, the protest movement, which began in late December 2025, quickly spread across the 31 provincesdriven not only by merchants and workers burdened by the deterioration of their economy, but also by a citizenry that sees material discontent as a reflection of a regime incapable of offering perspectives. In several cities, including Tehran, Kermanshah and Ilamthe demonstrations became massive and sustained, with scenes of civil disobedience, business closures, and protests that did not stop even after the government imposed extreme measures to silence dissent.
The state response has been, from the beginning, brutal. According to human rights organizations such as Iranian Human Rights (IHR)at least 45 people have diedincluding minors, while Thousands have been injured or arrested in just 12 days of protests. NGOs and independent groups also report, despite information restrictions, that security forces have broken into hospitals to arrest those injured in the demonstrations and that they have used lethal force on multiple occasions.
But what has caught the attention of international observers has been the tactic of digital censorship: the total blackout of internet and telecommunications services nationwidea recurring tool of the regime to block the circulation of images, videos and messages that may portray state violence or coordinate protests. This blackout, detected by monitoring groups such as NetBlocks and confirmed by multiple international agencies, was deliberately imposed from the center of power and leaves the country “almost incommunicado,” even preventing the use of virtual private networks that are usually the only way to connect to free information within the country.
The strategy is not new in Iran; The regime has resorted to similar blockades in protests in 2019 and 2022, and the interruption of digital access has become a form of suppress dissent before using lethal forcedrastically reducing the international visibility of what happens on the streets.
This pattern—violent repression combined with information control—has disturbing parallels with what was recently observed in Venezuelawhere the State, after the capture of Nicolas Maduro by US forces, reacted by toughening repressive tactics and affecting the free flow of information within its territory. In both cases, the regimes faced the challenge not only with brute force, but with mechanisms that seek neutralize the visibility of their violence and cut off the transmission of images and stories that could amplify the social revolt.
The logic of both governments appears to be the same: faced with the specter of political change—whether due to internal protests or external events that undermine their power—the first response is close public space, silence media and control the narrativein the hope that discontent does not find organized ways to consolidate. In Venezuela, this logic was expressed centuries ago in the capture of communications, pressure on journalists and the manipulation of social networks; In Iran, the way is total blackout and digital persecution.
This strategy is also a sign of weakness rather than strength. The simultaneous resort to physical violence and communication blackouts shows that the government feels incapable of managing the protest through consensus or negotiation. In a global context where information is a fundamental political asset, closing the internet is like close your eyes to reality: It may prevent others from seeing what is happening, but it does not change what is happening.
The immediate intention of these regimes is usually calm the waters, stop the escalation and wait for time to dilute the social pressurewhile opening minimal channels of concessions—such as promises of dialogue or cosmetic reforms—that operate as a release valve with no real structural impact. This allows the power to claim that it acts with “moderation” or “sensibility” towards its critics, even after having used extreme measures.
Iran now faces a critical challenge: its repressive response has ignited a flame that neither blackouts nor violence have been able to quell. The intensive use of force and censorship may temporarily contain protests, but it also deepens the fracture between the State and broad sectors of society. In Venezuela, for its part, repression coordinated with external intervention has generated a even deeper internal polarizationwith sectors firm in their rejection of the regime that do not disappear despite the state control of the narrative.
In both cases, repression becomes a constitutive element of resistance: the more violent and opaque the responses of power, the more they feed the perception that there is no possible future within the existing institutional framework. This does not necessarily mean that the regimes will collapse immediately, but it does mean that The stability they seek to impose is increasingly based on the authoritarian use of the State and less on popular legitimacy.
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