State media reports the Iranian regime has lifted the ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, amid widespread VPN use

The products of two US-based tech giants are reportedly once again available in Iran, after they had been banned following anti-government protests.

Reuters, citing Iranian state media, reported that Iranian authorities have lifted a ban on Meta’s messaging platform WhatsApp and Google Play as a first step to scale back internet restrictions.

It comes after WhatApp had announced in January 2023 that it had added proxy support to the latest version of WhatsApp because “there are many people who continue to be denied the ability to reach their loved ones because of internet shutdowns.”

That move allowed the millions of WhatsApp users to keep messaging, even if the Internet is blocked or disrupted by shutdowns by authoritarian regimes around the world.

Anti government protests

Meta had made the move in January 2023 after anti-government protests Iran began in September 2022, when 22 year old Mahsa Amini died whilst in the custody of Iran’s morality police, after she was arrested for “unsuitable attire”.

Eyewitnesses said that Amini had been severely beaten, which Iranian officials denied.

Amini’s death triggered a wave of protests across Iran, with some female demonstrators removing their hijab or publicly cutting their hair as acts of protest.

Many hundreds of Iranian citizens were killed by Iranian security forces during the protests.

The Iranian government responded by restricting access to Meta’s Instagram and WhatsApp, claiming that social media platforms were widely used in the anti-government protests.

Iran also blocks YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, Blogger, Telegram, Snapchat, Medium, as well as some streaming services, including Netflix and Hulu.

VPN use

Reuters noted that the Islamic Republic has some of the strictest controls on Internet access in the world, but its blocks on US-based social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are routinely bypassed by tech-savvy Iranians using virtual private networks (VPNs).

Now Iran has decided to lift some of the restrictions.

“A positive majority vote has been reached to lift limitations on access to some popular foreign platforms such as WhatsApp and Google Play”, Iran’s official IRNA news agency was quoted by Reuters as stating on Tuesday, referring to a meeting on the matter headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian.

“Today the first step in removing internet limitations… has been taken,” IRNA cited Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology Sattar Hashemi as saying.

Besides the widespread use of VPNs, Iranian citizens have sought to utilise other technologies to bypass the regime Internet restrictions.

In 2022 for example, activists smuggled dozens of Starlink terminals into Iran so they could keep communicating, after Elon Musk said he would activate Starlink services in Iran as part of a US government-backed effort to “advance internet freedom and the free flow of information” to Iranians.

In December 2022 Musk said nearly 100 Starlink internet terminals are active in Iran.