Iranian authorities have said they are considering \u201cgradually\u201d restoring internet access after imposing a communications shutdown 10 days ago, as nationwide protests in the country began to subside following a crackdown by security forces.<\/p>\n
Demonstrations sparked in late December by anger over economic hardship exploded into protests widely seen as the biggest challenge to the Iranian leadership in years.<\/p>\n
Iranian officials have said the demonstrations were peaceful before turning into \u201criots\u201d and blamed foreign influence, namely from Iran\u2019s foes, the United States and Israel.<\/p>\n
The rallies subsided after the crackdown carried out by security forces amid a communications blackout that started on January 8 as the protests grew in size and intensity.<\/p>\n
Government officials have said calm has been restored, with schools reopening on Sunday \u2014 Iran\u2019s weekend falling on Thursday and Friday \u2014 after a week of closure.<\/p>\n
Late Saturday, the Tasnim news agency reported \u201cthe relevant authorities announced that internet access would also be gradually restored\u201d, but gave no further details.<\/p>\n
Citing an unnamed \u201cinformed source\u201d, the agency said local messaging applications \u201cwill soon be activated\u201d on Iran\u2019s domestic intranet.<\/p>\n
On Sunday morning, AFP was able to connect to the internet from its Tehran office, though the vast majority of internet providers and mobile internet remain cut.<\/p>\n
Outgoing international calls have been possible since Tuesday, and text messaging was restored on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
For days, text messages and international phone calls \u2014 and at times even local calls \u2014 were cut off.<\/p>\n
Iran has since been relying on its intranet, which has supported local media websites, ride-hailing apps, delivery service and banking platforms.<\/p>\n
Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) alleges it has verified the deaths of 3,428 protesters killed by security forces. However, the media cannot independently confirm the figure, and Iranian officials have not given an exact death toll for the protests.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said \u201ca few thousand\u201d people had been killed by what he called \u201cagents\u201d of the United States and Israel, and Iranian local media has reported multiple deaths among security forces.<\/p>\n
Khamenei said authorities \u201cmust break the back of the seditionists\u201d, as local media has reported thousands of arrests and rights groups have estimated up to 20,000 people have been detained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iranian authorities have said they are considering \u201cgradually\u201d restoring internet access after imposing a communications shutdown 10 days ago, as nationwide protests in the country began to subside following a crackdown by security forces. Demonstrations sparked in late December by anger over economic hardship exploded into protests widely seen as the biggest challenge to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15395,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15393\/revisions\/15395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}