When Iranian authorities initiated a near-total internet blackout during the 2025 conflict with Israel, the move disrupted far more than public discourse—it paralyzed digital infrastructure across the country.

Cloud-dependent platforms largely went dark, and from financial transactions to logistics, both businesses and millions of people lost the ability to participate in their digital infrastructure.

Despite the fact that Psiphon maintained connectivity for over 1.5 million Iranians at the height of the shutdown, it underscored a critical and growing risk: in contested regions, internet access is not a given—it is a political and social strategy that is vulnerable to abrupt, unpredictable, and unilateral control.

This isn’t an isolated case. Across the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, governments are increasingly using network control. From throttling during protests to geoblocking entire platforms, digital interference has become normalized. Businesses reliant on stable connectivity—whether for defense, cross-border logistics, IoT, communications, enterprise software, or cloud-based customer platforms—must now factor censorship and disruption into their risk models.

Psiphon Forge addresses these realities with an embeddable, battle-tested API that ensures application-level resilience through multi-protocol tunneling and real-time network adaptation. Built on Psiphon’s global anti-censorship infrastructure, Forge helps businesses maintain critical operations and data flows, even in regions where connectivity is deliberately constrained.

The lesson of the Iranian shutdown is clear when it comes to networks. Making sure your network infrastructure can withstand unpredictability and maintain connectivity must be part of “business as usual.”