The move was hailed by reformists in Tehran, but condemned by conservatives
Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace has unanimously voted to lift a nationwide ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, state media reported on Tuesday. Tehran restricted access to a host of Western messaging and social media platforms during a wave of civil unrest in 2022.
“The ban on WhatsApp and Google Play was removed by unanimous vote of the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace,” the IRNA news agency reported, after a meeting of the council chaired by President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“Today, we took the first step towards lifting internet restrictions with unanimity and consensus,” Iranian Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi wrote in a post on X shortly afterwards.
WhatsApp, Google Play, and several other platforms including Instagram, were banned in Iran in September 2022, after the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody sparked a wave of demonstrations. Tehran maintains that the protests were stoked and encouraged by Western intelligence agencies, and police in the Iranian capital have released video suggesting that the woman died of a heart attack rather than as a result of abuse.
Facebook, X, and YouTube have all been blocked in Iran since 2009.
Reformists have long argued that these bans have not bolstered national security, and have only irritated the Iranian public. “What have [the bans] achieved so far except anger and additional costs to people's lives and the spread of pessimism?!” presidential adviser Ali Rabiei wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.
According to AFP, however, a group of conservative lawmakers wrote to the Supreme Council of Cyberspace before the vote and urged them not to lift the restrictions, claiming that such a move would be a “gift to [Iran’s] enemies.”
In September, the White House urged American tech CEOs to help Iranians bypass government restrictions by offering them free VPN tools to access their platforms. VPNs, or virtual private networks, allow internet users to connect to web services via proxy servers in other countries.
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