Iranians are leaving the country just to get internet

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+ Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Planet Money Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions The Best Music of 2025 About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics Iranians are leaving the country just to get internet As the Israel and the U.S. continue striking Iran, Iranians are traveling across the border with Turkey to find an Internet connection with access cut off in Iran World Iranians are leaving the country just to get internet April 3, 20263:56 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered By Emily Feng Iranians are leaving the country just to get internet Listen &middot; 5:03 5:03 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5753859/nx-s1-9716463" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript As the Israel and the U.S. continue striking Iran, Iranians are traveling across the border with Turkey to find an Internet connection with access cut off in Iran Sponsor Message SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Iran is still under a near-total communications blackout ever since the U.S. and Israel began striking the country. The authorities there have cut the internet for most people and disconnected phone lines. So for many Iranians, as NPR's Emily Feng reports, only one option exists. (SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORN HONKING) EMILY FENG, BYLINE: What would you do to get a message out to the world? For some Iranians, it is going to another country. I'm standing now on the Turkish side of the border where I see dozens of Iranians crossing on foot. Many of them have made an arduous land journey through these snow-encrusted mountains to here, to Turkey, so that they can connect to the internet. One of them is this man, traveling with his wife and two children. Like all the Iranians in this piece, he asked to stay completely anonymous because he fears arrest when he returns back home. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken). FENG: His son needs internet for his work, he says, so the whole family drove hours and paid an exit tax to come to Van Province in Turkey to get Wi-Fi. They'll stay in Turkey for just a few days for internet and for respite from the bombing. So will this Iranian woman who has just crossed, as well. Her son lives in western Turkey, and with the internet cut in Iran, she has not been able to contact him. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken). FENG: So about every three days, she travels several hours to cross Iran's border into eastern Turkey... UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken). FENG: ...Just to be able to connect to the internet to video call her son and let him know that she's alive. They won't even get to meet in person before she returns home to Iran because her son is too far away and is in university, she says. Iran's authorities have been spending more than a decade revamping their internet infrastructure and centralizing it to just a few internet ports leading in and out of the country so they can shut it off during anti-government protests or during wartime, like now. Abbas Milani, a professor of Iranian studies at Stanford University, says his friends in Iran are now paying exorbitant prices to buy just minutes of Starlink connections or access to so-called white SIMs, elite government-approved phone cards, which some Iranians are selling bytes of bandwidth from. ABBAS MILANI: And it is extremely dangerous even to buy it because the regime has declared that this is a counter-revolutionary activity. FENG: Milani calls the internet blackout a war crime because it leaves tens of millions of Iranians unable to receive warnings before Israeli or U.S. strikes fall on them. It's also decimated Iranian small businesses, which use WhatsApp and Instagram to reach customers. Milani says the regime is willing to bear this cost. MILANI: They feel - and I think they're right - that this is the most existential threat they have. That's why they have gone berserk. They are willing to pay any price, including bringing the entire global economy to a crisis if that's the price the world has to pay for their survival. FENG: But the internet people buy on the black market doesn't work very well. Many Iranians say they cannot open web pages or social media with it, and so they come here to the city of Van about 2 hours from Iran's border with eastern Turkey, looking for internet. We're sitting in a cafe in Van, and I just saw a man walk past looking lost. He'd just come from Iran a few hours ago, and he said he was planning to stay for just two days to check WhatsApp messages and the news and learn what was happening to his own country. He told us, can you imagine in 2026 that you can live without internet for weeks and weeks? And Van phone stores are getting more Iranian customers. Shall we go to Vodafone? And one salesperson, Hamza Yildirim, says... HAMZA YILDIRIM: (Speaking Turkish). FENG: More Iranians have been asking for sims ever since January, when the Iranian government also shut off the Internet and began arresting and executing demonstrators. These jaunts for internet are risky. Iranians can be stopped at the border. They can be detained after returning, Iranians say, if authorities discover suspicious messages on their phones, there are widespread fears of regime informants blending in with the large crowds of Iranians in Van, which is why most people NPR tried to interview refused to be recorded. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Persian). Her mother says she should not speak because the security pressure is really high. FENG: Yet, others do speak. They leave Iran, and the moment they are out, they find their voices again. One of them is this Iranian woman traveling with her son. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Persian). FENG: She says, "the only voice is the voice of the Iranian regime now because they have cut the internet." UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken). FENG: "And in doing so," she says, "they have shot our voices and cut our tongues." UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken). FENG: "But the moment we can access internet," she says, "we can talk for ourselves." Emily Feng, along Turkey's border with Iran. Copyright &copy; 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. 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