In Foreign Policy, Kourosh Ziabari, suggests that if the Iranian administration is successful in permanently blacking out the outside internet, the country is in line for a new cycle of chaos. He writes:
If the government presses ahead with blacking out the internet permanently, it will plunge Iran into a new cycle of chaos and discord.
Iranians will not acquiesce to forfeiting their right to communicate with the world and losing their social media leverage. Iranian students will not study in a climate of detachment from the international academic community. Journalists will protest lack of access to reporting resources online. The country will lose thousands of minds in a new wave of immigration as entrepreneurs, engineers, professionals, and academics pack their suitcases and depart the country in search of settings in which their bare-bones right to use the internet, let alone other civil and political rights, is not unremittingly antagonized.
Unless the Guardian Council, the country’s constitutional watchdog, decides to intervene—which is highly unlikely—or top authorities realize the risks and discourage the parliament from taking further action on the legislation, it will move forward, triggering a new round of standoffs with the public. The 2009 Green Movement was the upshot of the establishment squaring off against a public that believed its voice was being ignored and its vote discounted. Decimating the internet will be a similar act of government self-immolation that will further fragment Iranian society along ideological, political, and cultural lines and precipitate a serious security crisis.
If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.