Op-Ed
Break the Revolutionary Guard’s Monopoly over VPNs in Iran
August 19, 2024
In November 2019, Abolhassan Firouzabadi, chief of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, a body Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei created in 2012 to oversee the Islamic Republic’s cyber policy, announced that the Iranian government would seek to regulate and limit virtual private networks (VPNs), pathways that mask computer locations in order to enhance privacy and bypass government censorship. “Since many organizations and people now use VPNs, and it has grown into quite a lucrative economy, we are hoping that legal VPN operators will be launched in the country,” he explained.
It may seem illogical that a theocratic dictatorship would tolerate VPNs when regime officials openly strive for a national intranet that is cut off from the world, but such paradoxes are common within the regime where ideology and reality clash. Iranians thirst for outside information, and even regime officials do not trust government pronouncements. Whereas three decades ago, use, possession, and trade of illegal satellite dishes kept Iranians connected to the outside world, today the internet does. Back in the 1990s, the IRGC and Iran’s various security services were aware that Iranians were watching “Baywatch” rather than attending religious lectures, but their own family members also indulged and even if they did not participate, they had close friends who did. No one wants to be the narc in his or her own social circle. Strategically, a blind eye also made sense to manage the pressure cooker.
In November 2023, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Major-General Mostafa Izadi, chief of Iran’s command for cyber and new threats, declared, “If we can dominate the field, we can influence the whole world.” Izadi might trumpet ideology, but IRGC’s goal is as much greed. The IRGC for decades has been as much a commercial conglomerate as it is a fighting force. The two are not mutually exclusive. Profits from its business empire are a greater source of funding for its terror activities than the official budget it receives from the Iranian government. Back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that in many years, the IRGC’s business empire provides 80 percent of the Revolutionary Guard’s operating budget.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace managed to implement its vision, and today the IRGC dominates the domestic VPN network. In theory, the IRGC controls less by censoring content than by slowing its VPNs during times of trouble, and Iranians also turn to black market VPNs, but most use the official VPNs to bypass regime censorship.
Iranian analysts estimate the profits from the IRGC’s censorship and sale of technology to bypass censorship can net the group upwards of $3 billion annually. Compare that to the rockets Hamas fires at Israel that can cost as little as $600, and the military implications can be staggering.
Perhaps part of any coherent strategy toward Iran, therefore, must be to break the IRGC stranglehold over VPNs. The Iranian police already crack down on SpaceX’s Starlink not simply because they fear free information, but also because the IRGC resents the financial hit. Rather than sit passively in the background or snipe with SpaceX founder Elon Musk for political reasons, it is essential that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington work together to target the IRGC near-monopoly. This need not mean granting a monopoly for any company helping Iranians bypass IRGC VPNs. Starlink demonstrates success, but Google works on tools to counter repression, as do smaller companies. It would be a win-win, however, supporting Iranian freedom, shutting down an IRGC revenue stream, and thereby making a Middle East teetering on the brink slightly safer, especially if pursued in conjunction with other strategies to drain IRGC resources.
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