A senior regime official has acknowledged that billions of tomans circulate through Iran’s VPN market, raising fresh questions about who profits from restrictions imposed on millions of internet users.
The Iranian regime’s system of internet censorship has produced a vast parallel economy in which millions of people are forced to pay simply to access websites and social media platforms that are freely available elsewhere.
A senior official in the administration of Masoud Pezeshkian has now acknowledged the extraordinary scale of this market, revealing that the annual financial turnover of VPN and filter-breaking services in Iran is estimated at between 7 and 12 trillion tomans.
Mohammad-Jafar Ghaem-Panah also acknowledged that this enormous flow of money does not go to the Ministry of Communications or telecommunications operators. Instead, he admitted that authorities “do not know whose pockets it goes into.”
The admission raises a fundamental question: why does a system that imposes restrictions on the internet remain in place despite its enormous economic cost to the public and the absence of any transparent accounting of the money generated by those restrictions?
A Profitable Market Created by Censorship
The scale of the VPN market is enormous because internet filtering has become deeply embedded in everyday life.
Earlier reports estimated that the paid VPN market alone generates around 125 billion tomans per day, or nearly 4 trillion tomans per month. Other estimates indicate that close to 90 percent of Iranian internet users rely on either paid or free VPN services to access blocked platforms and websites.
This means millions of Iranians are effectively forced to pay a private market simply to circumvent restrictions imposed by their own government.
The result is an extraordinary contradiction: the regime blocks access to major global platforms, while a lucrative industry emerges to sell the tools required to bypass those blocks.
The lack of transparency surrounding this market has fueled allegations that individuals with political connections, companies linked to powerful institutions, or other influential actors benefit from the continuation of censorship.
The official admission that authorities do not know where billions of tomans ultimately go makes the issue even more serious.
The Regime’s Double Standard
The internet restrictions also expose a striking double standard among regime officials.
Ghaem-Panah acknowledged that many senior officials—including offices associated with former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—use platforms such as X and Instagram, even though these platforms remain blocked for ordinary Iranians.
While officials can access international social media, ordinary citizens must often purchase VPN services to reach the same platforms.
This discrepancy has become a symbol of the regime’s broader approach to censorship: restrictions are imposed on society while those responsible for imposing them retain access to the information and communication tools they deny to the public.
The issue has even prompted criticism from within the regime’s own parliament. One lawmaker described the VPN business as an exceptionally profitable “mafia,” arguing that some individuals benefit substantially from maintaining restrictions on cyberspace.
Censorship as a Tool of Repression
The financial dimension is only one part of the problem.
For years, internet censorship has functioned as an essential instrument of political repression. During periods of nationwide unrest, the regime has repeatedly restricted or severed internet access to prevent protesters from communicating, document abuses, or sharing information with the outside world.
During the January 2026 uprising and the subsequent 40-day war, internet disruptions reportedly exceeded 2,093 hours, making the episode one of the longest periods of internet disruption in Iran’s recent history.
Such shutdowns serve a clear political purpose: limiting the ability of citizens to organize, suppressing the circulation of information, and making it more difficult for the outside world to document repression.
The same system that restricts access to information therefore creates the conditions for a profitable VPN market.
The Cost to Iranian Society
The consequences extend far beyond the money consumers are forced to spend on VPNs.
Businesses dependent on international platforms and digital services face additional costs and uncertainty. Entrepreneurs, students, researchers, journalists, and ordinary citizens encounter barriers to accessing information and communicating with the outside world.
The widespread use of unknown or unreliable VPN services also creates serious cybersecurity and privacy risks. Users may expose their personal data, communications, and devices to malicious operators simply because they have no practical alternative.
Meanwhile, resources that could be invested in improving telecommunications infrastructure are diverted into the costly technological battle between censorship and circumvention.
The economic damage therefore extends beyond the billions spent directly on VPN services.
Who Benefits From Keeping the Internet Closed?
The regime’s latest admission exposes a contradiction that can no longer be ignored.
If censorship is primarily justified as a security measure, why has it created a multitrillion-toman market whose beneficiaries remain unclear?
If the government genuinely wants to improve the digital economy, why does it maintain restrictions that force businesses and citizens to spend enormous sums circumventing government controls?
And if officials themselves routinely use blocked platforms, why are ordinary Iranians denied the same access?
These questions point to a deeper problem. Internet censorship in Iran is not simply a technological policy. It has become intertwined with political repression, economic interests, and opaque networks of power.
The Iranian people are effectively being forced to pay for the barriers imposed upon them.
The regime’s own officials have now acknowledged the existence of a multitrillion-toman VPN economy while admitting that they do not know where the money ends up. That admission demands transparency, accountability, and an end to policies that turn access to information into a source of profit.
Iran’s internet restrictions are harming the economy, threatening privacy, suppressing free expression, and enriching an opaque market—all while regime officials themselves continue to access the very platforms denied to millions of Iranian citizens.