I’m standing on the platform at Cadorna station, wrapped in a scarf that cost more than my weekly grocery budget. The nebbia (fog) in Milan today is disrespectful. It’s so thick I can barely see the digital clock. The train is delayed. Again. A typical Tuesday in Lombardy.
I open WhatsApp to complain to my mom in Tehran. I have 5G full bars, a connection so crisp it feels like a biological necessity. I press record.
“Maman, salam. Inja havaye sag-e…” (Mom, hi. The weather here is bad…)
The spinning wheel appears. “Reconnecting…”
Then, the grey clock icon turns into nothing. She’s gone.
My 5G is fine. The problem isn’t Milan. The problem is that in Tehran, the internet just drowned. Again.
To understand the reality of Iran internet censorship 2025, forget the headlines about the new “Untrue Content” laws passed in July. Look at the phone of a 20-year-old student. It’s not a device. It’s a battlefield. While I pay for Wi-Fi with euros, they pay with their sanity.
Here are the six words that define the daily war to just say “Hello.”
1. The Oxygen: Filter-shekan (فیلترشکن)
In Europe, a VPN is what you use to watch US Netflix or hide from ad trackers. In Iran, a Filter-shekan (literally “filter breaker”) is digital oxygen. It is the first thing you install on a new phone, before you even save your dad’s number.
It’s not “hacker” slang anymore. Your mamani (grandma) knows this word. She knows that without a filter-shekan, her expensive Samsung is just a glowing brick. When the government blocks a protocol, you feel it physically, like the air leaving the room.
We don’t talk about the weather in elevators anymore. We talk about protocols. “Is your Argo VPN working? My Psiphon is dead.” It is the universal language of a suffocated society.
📚 The Triple Threat: Filter-shekan (فیلترشکن)
- Literal: Filter-breaker.
- Street Vibe: The passport. The lifeline. The only app that matters.
- Example (Me to my Italian Prof):
- Fingilish: “Dar Iran hatta baraye didan-e Instagram bayad az filter-shekan estefade koni.”
- Persian: “در ایران حتی برای دیدن اینستاگرام باید از فیلترشکن استفاده کنی.”
- English: “In Iran, even to see Instagram you have to use a filter-breaker.”
2. The Currency: Config (کانفیگ) & Server (سِرور)
Forget the App Store. In 2025, the real hustle is trading V2Ray Configs.
Old-school “click-to-connect” VPN apps are dead or blocked. Now, everyone is a network engineer. You don’t just “turn on” the internet. You load a Config (a string of code) that tells your phone how to tunnel through the censorship wall to a specific Server abroad.
This has created a new black market economy. I have friends back home who don’t sell crypto or stocks. They sell uptime.
Imagine this scene: You are at a cafe in Vanak Square. You don’t ask for the Wi-Fi password. You ask, “Do you have a working config?”
People sell these on Telegram like they used to sell pirated DVDs in the early 2000s. You have your “Config Guy.” He sends you a QR code. You scan it. Suddenly, you have a German IP address. But the joy is short-lived. The censors are smart. They identify the server traffic within 48 hours and block the IP.
So the hustle starts again.
“Bro, send me a new config, this German server has high ping.”
“No, get the Turkey server, the VLESS protocol is faster.”
It is an exhausting cycle of buy, connect, get blocked, repeat.
📚 The Triple Threat: Config (کانفیگ)
- Literal: Configuration file (for V2Ray/Xray protocols).
- Street Vibe: The keys to the gate. Buying hope in code form.
- Example (Telegram Chat):
- Fingilish: “Ye config-e V2Ray baram befrest, in server-e Alman kheili lag dare.”
- Persian: “یه کانفیگ V2Ray برام بفرست، این سرور آلمان خیلی لگ داره.”
- English: “Send me a V2Ray config, this German server has too much lag.”
3. What is Internet-e Melli (اینترنت ملی)?
The government calls it the National Information Network (NIN). They sell it as “secure, fast, and indigenous.”
Reality check: It’s a luxury prison.
Internet-e Melli is an internal intranet. It is a walled garden where the walls are ten meters high and topped with razor wire. It loads government banking sites instantly. It streams domestic movies perfectly. But it cuts you off from Google, WhatsApp, Telegram, and the rest of the planet.
This is the ultimate psychological trick. When your config fails, you aren’t staring at a “No Connection” error. You still have bars. You can still open the Snapp app (Iran’s Uber). You can still transfer money. But you cannot see the outside world.
It’s a “stealth blackout” where the cables aren’t cut, but the global internet is gone. You are trapped in a digital bubble where the only news comes from state agencies. It is claustrophobic in a way that is hard to explain to my Italian classmates who panic when Spotify buffers for two seconds.
📚 The Triple Threat: Internet-e melli (اینترنت ملی)
- Literal: National Internet.
- Street Vibe: A prettified cage. When this is on, you are alone.
- Example (Street Sarcasm):
- Fingilish: “Age internet-e melli ro roshan konan, bayad ba kabootar payam bedim.”
- Persian: “اگه اینترنت ملی رو روشن کنن، باید با کبوتر پیام بدیم.”
- English: “If they switch on the national internet, we’ll have to send messages via pigeon.”
4. The System: Zir-sakht (زیرساخت) & Ghat’i (قطعی)
Zir-sakht means “infrastructure.” The state loves this word. They claim they are “upgrading the digital infrastructure” whenever the speeds drop to zero.
But for us, Zir-sakht is the weapon. It’s the machine designed to create Ghat’i (disconnection).
Ghat’i is the soundtrack of Tehran. It isn’t just a technical error. It is strategic. During protests, the Ghat’i is absolute. During exam season, it is sporadic. In the evenings, when people want to unwind, the bandwidth is throttled until you give up in frustration.
This is the goal. They don’t need to block everything 100% of the time. They just need to make the experience so painful, so slow, and so unreliable that you eventually stop trying to access the free web. They want you to settle for the fast, easy, censored cage of the National Internet.
Ghat’i is the video call freezing right when you’re showing your new apartment. It’s the voice note that sends but never delivers. It is the purpose-built friction of a surveillance state.
📚 The Triple Threat: Ghat’i (قطعی)
- Literal: Disconnection / Outage.
- Street Vibe: The weapon used to break your nerves (asab).
- Example (Tehran Kid):
- Fingilish: “Baz ghat’i shoru shod, fekr konam daran ye ghalati mikonan.”
- Persian: “باز قطعی شروع شد، فکر کنم دارن یه غلطی میکنن.”
- English: “The disconnection started again, I think they [the regime] are up to something.”
📚 The Deep Dive: Survival Vocab Recap
My phone pings. The fog is lifting over Cadorna.
“El joon, sorry, the Zir-sakht is messing up today.”
I look at the message. I don’t want to just send a heart emoji this time. I want to know the status on the ground.
So, tell me: What is your current ping in Tehran right now? Are you on a VLESS config or did you find a working VPN? Drop your survival status in the comments. Let’s map the blackout.
