Iran’s Digital Prison was Built with the Help of Russians

This story written by Daria Dergacheva originally appeared on Global Voices on February 27, 2026.

Iran’s protests of December 2025 into January 2026, the longest in the country’s history of internet shutdowns, have shown the world how authoritarian countries are prepared to enforce their own concept of “digital sovereignty.”  According to Mikhail Klimarev, who heads the NGO For Internet Freedom, when the internet gets shut down by those in power for such a long time, there are usually rivers of blood already flowing through the streets. While the exact number of Iranian citizens who have become victims at the hand of their own government remains unknown, sources like UN Special Rapporteur Mai Sato suggest it is at least 5,000, but could be as many as 20,000.

As earlier reported by Global Voices, as the protests grew, Iranian authorities imposed a total internet shutdown on January 8, which NetBlocks confirmed as a near-complete collapse of connectivity that affected mobile networks, fixed-line services, and international gateways. This continued for several days until limited access began returning on January 23.

Iran Insight reports that as of February 23, despite the absence of a comprehensive ban, access to major platforms remains restricted. Most users, the publication claims, are now relying on virtual private networks (VPNs). Meta’s messenger WhatsApp, which had previously been accessible, has also faced restrictions; at the same time, the government continues to expand policies granting limited access to selected users.

Iranian digital rights organization Filter Watch confirmed that Iranian authorities have switched to a “white-listed model” — a system whereby the global internet is blocked by default and only resources included in “white lists” are accessible.

Foreign Policy’s analysis, printed on January 14, reports a significant Russian influence in the Iranian shutdown — specifically, that Russia helped Iran to deploy strategically managed connectivity.

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Vis email correspondence with Global Voices, Miaan Group’s Director of Digital Rights and Security Amir Rashidi explained, “Previously, during internet shutdowns, the creation of whitelist mechanisms was mostly implemented at the service level. For example, certain SIM cards were whitelisted and not subject to censorship, or specific news and non-news websites were granted connectivity. But now we are witnessing whitelisting being enforced at the infrastructure level as well. As you can see, we are still not fully connected to the internet, and the limited inbound and outbound traffic is entirely the result of infrastructure-level whitelisting.”

This more sophisticated internet censorship system relies on DPI inspection packages, a technology that Russia began to slowly introduce at the start of 2020. Foreign Policy and other media outlets claim that at the core of this system in Iran is Russian-assisted network control architecture built around DPI, which allows identification and censorship not only by specific applications, but also by the type of traffic — for example, blocking all messengers and all video streaming traffic.

The publication adds that Protei, with a head office in Jordan but roots in St.Petersburg, Russia, has supported Iran’s efforts in introducing  interception, monitoring, and traffic management systems, and integrating DPI into the network architecture. It was not made clear exactly how Protei assisted the Iranian authorities, whether by supplying the hardware necessary for the system to function, training locals in internet censorship, or something else entirely.

Global Voices found documentation available for download on Protei’s domestic website, which describes in detail the DPI platform software the company has offered since 2020. It is widely known that previously, Russia had to use other commercial vendors, such as Sandvine, which after Bloomberg’s 2020 investigation into the Belarusian government’s internet blocking during the 2020 protests — and the agency’s 2022 investigation into sales of DPI solutions to Russia — was blacklisted by U.S. authorities. The company was only recently removed from the blacklist.

However, according to the openly available documentation, Protei’s own domestic DPI platform can provide a perfect censorship mechanism. The PDF provided states: “The PROTEI DPI system provides extensive capabilities that can be used to implement network-level censorship and traffic control. By performing deep packet inspection at the application layer, the platform can identify specific services and protocols (such as messaging, file sharing, VoIP, gaming and others) and selectively block, throttle, or prioritize them.”

It continued: “It supports URL and domain blacklisting and whitelisting, including scheduling at what time of the day they need to be implemented. It also enables operators to deny access to designated websites or allow only approved resources. The system can also filter traffic based on externally supplied lists of prohibited resources and enforce DNS whitelists, blocking responses from non-approved DNS servers.”

It is important to note that the Jordan-based company of the same name, Protei, which has a similar website design, euphemizes it as “traffic management and policy control,” but includes DPI platform in its list of services. Jordan’s Protei, as a commercial vendor of DPI and other surveillance solutions, includes in its client list MTN Irancell, Iran’s largest telecom provider.

MTN Irancell is an Iranian telecommunications company that operates the country’s largest 2, 3, 4, 4.5 and 5G mobile network, as well as fixed wireless TD-LTE internet services.  According to Filter Watch, Irancell installed a new director on January 18, who would be ready to implement a shutdown whenever needed.

Among others, Protei’s other clients include Tcell, the leading mobile operator in Tajikistan; Uztelecom, one of the largest telecommunications companies and mobile network operators in Uzbekistan, and Ucell, the country’s biggest mobile network brand, owned and operated by COSCOM which is itself owned by the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan; the Jordan Armed Forces; Zong 4G, Pakistan’s top data and communications network; a Nigerien national telephone and telecommunications carrier; Safaricom’s mobile services in Kenya; Telecom Namibia Limited, a state-owned telecommunications and ICT service provider; and the Qatar Public Telecommunications Corporation.

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It is not easy to identify clients, as they are mostly represented by logos without any description: Irancell, for instance, is shown as MTN, which does not immediately suggest any affiliation with Iran. Hovewer, the logo is an exact copy of one of the logos used by Irancell MTN:

Canada’s Citizen Lab investigated Protei in 2023, and discovered that it was helping build a mobile surveillance system for Iran. Through leaked Iranian emails, it found that Protei had been selected, as indicated in the reviewed documents, to provide core network components in support of user authentication, data management and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), SMS delivery, and mobile network signaling by Iran’s largest mobile service provider, Ariantel. Citizen Lab sent questions to Mena’s branch of Protei, which covered, among other things, whether the company’s exports were subject to any sanction regimes in Iran and if so, how the company has ensured compliance with these regimes in either the sale of technology, or technical assistance and services to Iranian authorities or companies. An answer still has not been received.

Meanwhile, as at the time of publishing, all three branches of Protei are functioning. The Estonia location has a LinkedIn page and submits yearly financial reports; Jordan has a LinkedIn page and a website boasting clients from many authoritarian countries on which it claims that it “provides services to over 400 esteemed customers in over 46 countries supporting a subscriber base exceeding 300 million subscribers worldwide”; and Russia exhibits documentation on surveillance and censorship solutions on both its website and a LinkedIn page with 64 followers.

According to the newspaper Kommersant, in 2024, the main Russian telecommunication company Rostelecom, which is state-owned, entered into a joint venture with Protei. In the report, a local telecom expert suggested that Rostelecom would own 100 percent of Protei in the future.

Based on Kommersant’s report, the limited liability company STC Protei is owned by Anton Pinchuk (28.56 percent), Yuri Kolobkov and Vladimir Freinkman (18.57 percent each), and Maxim Maslov and CEO Nina Apostolova (17.15 percent each). The company’s revenue for 2022 — the most recent data published in the database — amounted to RUB 2.88 billion (USD 43 million), with a net profit of RUB 398 million (USD 5.9 million). STC Protei is the co-founder of Protei ST, TPK Optima, Protei TL, Sigurd IT, Protei Lab, and Protei IT Engineering.

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