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Iran’s government-imposed internet blackout has sharply constrained what people inside Iran can share during the early weeks of the Middle East war, and that shortfall has changed how many Americans learn about events, an Associated Press report said. Iranian American social media creator Ariana Afshar described the problem as an inability to reliably gather perspectives from inside Iran even as she and other diaspora creators try to explain the conflict using lived viewpoints. She said she has faced moments when relatives are too afraid to share their true feelings, and that the resulting information gap has amplified the role of Iranian Americans posting commentary from abroad.
Afshar, based in New York, said she tried to produce commentary grounded in perspectives from people in Iran about the escalating conflict. But with Tehran’s blackout stifling almost all communications from the country, she said it was difficult to “reliably survey perspectives” from inside Iran. Afshar said the absence of on-the-ground reporting from Iran has been met with increased attention to Iranian American creators explaining Iran’s history and what they describe as conflicting desires among its citizens in short videos shared online.
The AP report connected the shift to a surge in U.S. interest in the war, citing Google Search Trends showing searches such as “why are we at war with iran” rising by 3,000% in the first week of March. In that demand environment, some diaspora creators said their influence has grown beyond what they view as a balanced representation of Iran’s views. Others said that while they hope their audiences will understand, the blackout’s constraints also affect what creators can responsibly claim about conditions inside Iran.
Afshar also described how her own content reflects a desire not to speak over people in Iran. “I think it’s a huge problem among the Iranian diaspora, where they speak for Iranians a lot. I don’t want to fall into that,” Afshar said, according to the AP report. She said that when she can reach relatives, the information that does surface is often cautious or limited by fear, further complicating attempts to portray internal sentiment.
Babak Rahimi, an Iranian professor of culture, religion and technology at the University of California San Diego, said blackouts and retaliation fears are not only reducing volume, but also changing what kind of accounts can be verified during wartime. He said that in many conflicts, citizens supplement official reporting with first-person accounts posted on social media and widely shared, but that digital blackouts and government retaliation have “severely limited” that kind of access. Rahimi added that when communication is restricted, the effect is that online messaging can shift toward the circulation of emotions rather than information hewing closely to ground truth.
The AP report described how the Associated Press and other outlets have managed to continue some reporting inside Iran using a range of techniques, including satellite imagery, phone interviews, eyewitness accounts, and user-generated content they verify. It said that online, however, misinformation can still spread quickly through social media and messaging applications such as Telegram, where millions of users follow groups that allow inaccurate and unattributed content to circulate.
The report also cited creators who support the war and said the blackout creates openings for both genuine sentiment and manipulation. Houman Hemmati, who supports the war and left Iran after the 1979 revolution with family, said some disinformation is produced by the Iranian government, including fake firsthand accounts aimed at riling up Americans who oppose the war. He also referenced false information that appeared to claim Iran was behind a strike on an elementary school, saying a preliminary U.S. military investigation found outdated intelligence likely led the U.S. to carry out the strike, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on the findings.
Hemmati said that even though people in Iran may get brief chances to share information, the content quickly attracts attention when it appears. “All it takes is for just a little bit to leak out, and those images and stories go viral,” he said. In his view, the rapid spread reflects a hunger for firsthand accounts that normally would have been accessible more routinely during a war.
Other parts of the report focused on how families across borders are affected. It described a 35-year-old Iranian living in New York who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation against relatives in Iran. That person said a family WhatsApp chat between relatives in the U.S. and Tehran shows the damage from the blackout, because the chat has served as a place for small fragments of news that relatives cannot easily get otherwise. The report quoted messages from the first day of bombing, including a cousin’s question about where the bombing hit and a statement that what they watched was “smoke and explosions.”
The AP report said diaspora creators also describe a long-running “narrative war” among members of the community, where different accounts compete for influence. It cited Ciara Moezidis, a 26-year-old social media creator with extended family in Iran, who said the conflict among diaspora audiences has been exhausting because bombs are falling in Iran while creators cannot reach their families. Moezidis told the AP that her Instagram following increased by 2,000 people since January, when she started posting in support of Iranian protesters and against a war.
Other creators in the report said their aim is to ensure that people outside Iran can understand the human side of what is happening. Zoya Biglary, an Iranian American content creator with more than 600,000 Instagram followers, said she hoped Iranians could eventually see what the report described as an outpouring of support. “Maybe they’re looking for proof that someone on the outside kind of sees their humanity,” Biglary said, according to the AP report.