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January 10, 2026, 5:26 AM EST. Iran's internet shutdown, now about 36 hours, marks a new high-water mark in sophistication and severity, say experts. Roughly 90% of Iran's traffic vanished as international calls were blocked and domestic mobile networks collapsed. Authorities have jammed satellite links like Starlink, though the impact varied by neighborhood. The stark contrast with earlier cutoffs-including 2019 and Egypt's 2011 Tahrir shutdown-is the precision: officials may be whitelisting select sites to keep officials online while disabling broad access. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, continued posting on X during the outage, underscoring the political utility of selective access. Analysts caution that such a model could endure longer, enabling targeted propaganda via Telegram, Twitter, and Instagram while depriving most users of service. Universities saw brief restoration, then shutdown again.