This website that belongs to Mohsen Rezaei, former Commander of the IRGC and the present Secretary of the State exigency Council,wrote on April 1: Monthly, 40 billion Tomans (13 million dollars) in the form of profits from selling anti-filtering programs is earned by the “Mafia”.

Tabnak that did not disclose the name of this Mafia, but according to reports, the IRGC is greatly involved in selling anti-filtering programs as well as in filtering the websites. 

In recent days, commanders of the IRGC have strongly opposed removal of filtering from the opposition media.

Concurrently, Mashallah Shams al-Vaezin, a reporter affiliated with Rouhani’s faction, wrote in his facebook: If we calculate the total profit of selling anti-filtering programs in the country, it amounts to 100 billion Tomans (around 34 million dollars) a month.

In the Iranian regime, the websites and social networks such as facebook and twitter are filtered by a working group called “determination of examples of criminal contents” (Taein-e Masadiq-e Mohtavay-e Mojremaneh). Six ministers of Rouhani’s cabinet are members to this group. This Group is actively filtering the websites. Previously, Abdolsamad Khorram-abadei, head of this working group, had called the facebook as the “enemy of the Islamic Republic system” and a “Zionist and espionage website”. 

In order to increase the price of anti-filtering programs in Iran, with the beginning of the new Iranian year, the anti-filtering were suspended for one day and two days later they were sold for a higher price.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his report of March 12 on human rights in Iran, quoted from the report of Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, which stated that 50 million websites have been filtered in Iran. 

Mr. Shaheed had added that there is one exception and that is the government officials who have access to the websites.