. 🔸Communications Minister in Massoud Pezeshkian’s government says that, in sessions related to reopening the internet after 88 days of it being cut off, “they said that only 12 percent of the people need the internet.”

🔸On Tuesday, 20 Mordad, Setar Hashemi, by announcing this, said: “There is a small but loud group in the country that believes that the internet is sufficient only for 10 to 12 percent of the country’s population, and these views are usually raised in secret sessions or in classified matters.”

🔸Since the start of the 40-day war, the Iranian government cut the internet completely and nationwide, and did not restore it for the following 88 days.

🔸This has been the longest internet outage to date in the world. Amnesty International has said that officials of the Islamic Republic have systematically isolated more than 90 million people in the country and violated their right to freedom of information.

🔸The communications minister did not say which institutions or officials had opposed the reopening of the internet, nor did he specify the cases corresponding to 12 percent. This is while the reopening of the internet after 88 days of complete shutdown is still facing extensive restrictions and heavy filtering.