The communications blackout in Iran continued today. However, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, continued to post on X, using the platform to call protesters “a group of people determined to destroy“ and criticize U.S. President Donald Trump.
Khamenei posted on X 12 times on Friday.
Doug Madori, director of internet analytics at network intelligence platform Kentik, which studies internet outages, explained to CNN how posts are being made despite the internet shutdown.
““Iran is technically connected to the internet, even if no one can communicate there,” he said. “They just disconnected, even though they are connected.“
If the Iranian regime wanted to turn the internet back on, “they could do that for every person or for every specific internet connection. They probably have some set of things that they have pre-determined to stay connected,“ Madori said.
“We are seeing a small drop in traffic. So, there is some. It is very small, but it is not zero. It is probably some valuable people who have been connected,“ he added.