> Banks and all government organisations are soon going to require people to use a 'national email'. If your emails is @gmail.com they'll simply refuse it and will ask you to open an account on this new email site.
True, that was a policy statement from Taghipour, however my impression is that the resistance from the banking industry and Majles led to the mandate being scrapped. However, the overall point that Iran has a civil society around the Internet is valid and the reason I am pushing out the paper quickly.
Every morning I wake up to dozens of articles in my Google Reader from Fars News, Mehr and IRIB that assure me that Iran's international trade is doing just fine without the West. Surely state media wouldn't lie...
Hi, I am the author of the report and I wanted to clarify the technical detail that you get at. In fact there are two networks, a SIPRNet for the IRGC/MOI and the one that I cover. While I am still drafting my technical paper for arxiv, perhaps the abstract might clarify part of the argument.
"While foreign funding agencies have provided substantial support for the developers and vendors of services that facilitate the unfettered flow of information and opportunities for freedom of expression through the Internet, little consolidated knowledge exists on the basic communications network infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the absence open access and public data, rumors and fear have reigned supreme. During provisional research on the censorship regime of the government, we found initial indicators that telecommunications entities in Iran have leveraged private address spaces to build a mature information network only reachable within the country. Despite the clear political implications of the claim we put forward, particularly in light of rampant speculation regarding the mandate of Article 46 of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan to establish a ``national information network,'' we hestitate to engage in speculation regarding the purpose of this structure. Rather, in order to solicit critical feedback for future research, we outline our initial findings and attempt to demonstrate that the matter under contention is a nation-wide phenomenom that warrants broader attention."
So essentially, my argument is that the widescale routing of 10/8 subnets across domestic networks, coupled with domains pointed to these addresses, warrants serious attention.