A recent transparency feature on the social media platform X has inadvertently torn the mask off the Iranian regime’s two-faced internet policy, exposing a system of “digital apartheid” that grants the ruling elite unrestricted access to a free and open internet while the Iranian people are suppressed behind a wall of censorship. This hypocrisy, however, is merely the public face of a much larger criminal enterprise. Internet censorship in Iran is not just a tool for political repression; it is a deliberately engineered, multi-billion-rial black market controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and institutions under the direct command of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The privileged class: unfiltered internet for the censors
The scandal revolves around “White SIM cards,” exclusive cards that grant users unrestricted access to the global internet, bypassing all state-imposed censors. While ordinary Iranians struggle with a heavily censored internet, these SIM cards are provided to regime officials and insiders. Marketed at exorbitant prices ranging from 100 million to 900 million rials, they are a symbol of the deep chasm between the rulers and the ruled.
The list of those exposed using these privileged cards reads like a who’s who of the regime’s architects of censorship. Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani, who has categorically denied the existence of a “class-based internet,” was revealed to be using a White SIM. Similarly, Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi, who has publicly criticized the “pollution” of Iran’s internet by widespread filtering, enjoys unfiltered access himself.
Perhaps most galling is the inclusion of hardline members of parliament like Hamid Rasai, a fanatical supporter of internet restriction bills, and Gholam-Hossein Eje’i, the head of the judiciary. The very branch of government that oversees the committee responsible for filtering websites is itself exempt from its own draconian rules.
The real business: the regime’s multi-billion rial VPN mafia
While the elite enjoy their special access, the regime has created a massive captive market of ordinary citizens who are forced to buy Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent the censorship. This has spawned a vast, state-sponsored black market. As far back as September 2, 2019, the former Minister of Communications, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, admitted in parliament that the VPN trade was a “multi-hundred-billion-toman business” whose backers were well-known.
Today, the scale of this criminal enterprise is staggering. On November 13, 2024, former official Ezzatollah Zarghami stated the official turnover was 200 trillion rials, but other estimates place the real annual figure as high as one quadrillion rials. This is a mafia where the state acts as both arsonist and firefighter—imposing the filter and then selling the tools to bypass it. As one member of parliament candidly asked on May 27, 2023, “How can a government that can filter, not be able to filter the sellers of VPNs? It seems the profiteers of filtering have influence in some organizations.”
Unmasking the profiteers: the IRGC and Khamenei’s financial empire
The influence mentioned by that parliamentarian goes directly to the top. The primary beneficiaries of this lucrative censorship business are the regime’s most powerful and repressive institutions. The IRGC, Khamenei’s personal army and the main tool for crushing dissent, is a key operator in this market. The profits fund the very apparatus that oppresses the Iranian people.
Alongside the IRGC is the Mostazafan Foundation, a massive parastatal conglomerate, controlled directly by Ali Khamenei. Investigations by regime-affiliated media have revealed that a subsidiary of this foundation, a company named Kar-a Qeshm Electronic Commerce, provides direct banking gateways for a majority of the websites selling VPNs in Iran. When former minister Jahromi sent a list of 28 VPN-selling companies to the judiciary, no action was taken, because these entities are pillars of the regime itself.
Censorship as a pillar of a corrupt regime
The Iranian regime’s internet policy is a perfectly designed system of control and plunder. It uses censorship to suppress the population while simultaneously exploiting that same censorship to generate astronomical profits for its repressive apparatus. The White SIM card scandal is not an anomaly; it is a feature of a system built on deceit and discrimination.
Expecting an end to internet filtering under this regime is unrealistic. Censorship is woven into its very economic and security structure. For the Iranian people to gain true freedom of information, the source of the repression must be removed. Breaking the locks on the internet requires breaking the chains of the ruling theocracy and dismantling the entire corrupt clerical regime, led by its criminal IRGC.