Tehran says US restrictions are pushing Iranian sites off .com, a week after it told them to move

Tasnim reported on Monday that disruptions began on 7 November, when the sports site Varzesh3 and the cryptocurrency exchange Tetherland said they could not be reached on their .com domains. Varzesh3 announced it was available at varzesh3.ir; another platform restored access through hoosha.ai and advised Iranian businesses to move their domains away from the US registrar GoDaddy. AFTA, the cybersecurity centre under the Iranian presidency, had already urged organisations on 29 October to migrate to .ir, warning that sanctions-related restrictions could abruptly cut access to .com, .net and .org. The Files has found no independent registrar, CDN or measurement source corroborating the disruption; the account rests on Iranian state-affiliated media and two named websites, with no aggregate count of affected domains published.

The context is a year of deliberate disconnection. Al Jazeera reported on 14 October that Iran’s 90 million people had been subject to two state-imposed global internet shutdowns in 2026 — three weeks during the January protests and 88 days at the start of the current war — with officials signalling further restrictions and a continued crackdown on Starlink. ACLED, asked in late October whether access had truly been restored after what it calls the largest state-imposed shutdown in modern history, answered plainly: “No.” Connectivity remained extremely slow, platforms and messaging apps restricted, and previously reliable VPNs ineffective or unaffordable. Iran International reported outages in Tehran and several provinces on 3 November while noting, unusually for a diaspora outlet, that international monitoring systems continued to show relatively stable nationwide connectivity.

Assessment: The analytical point is incentive alignment, not coercion. Sanctions enforcement at the registrar layer produces the outcome Tehran has pursued by policy since January — a national internet on domestic domains — and AFTA was pushing migration a week before the disruptions Tasnim now blames on Washington. That sequencing is why the story needs corroboration before it is treated as fact: a state broadcaster reporting that foreign pressure vindicates its own directive has every reason to report it. The checks are specific and available: a GoDaddy or ICANN statement, OFAC general licences on personal communications, and IRNIC registration volumes. Until one of those lands, this is a claim about infrastructure, not an observed change in it.