Azari Jahromi: If the Internet Gateway is Handed Over to the Armed Forces, We Are Obligated to Implement It

Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran's Minister of Communications, states that the ministry is "opposed" to the plan of "handing over the international internet gateway" to the armed forces, but if this plan is approved by the parliament, "we are obligated to implement it." Early in November of this year, media reported on the proposal to "hand over the internet gateway to the armed forces" by Nasrollah Pejmanfar, a member of the Cultural Commission of the parliament. According to the information in this proposal, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, police, and the Passive Defense Organization are designated as effective members of the supervisory board for the activities of domestic and foreign messaging applications. Although the Cultural Commission of the parliament has not yet expressed its opinion on this proposal, the Iranian Minister of Communications has stated, "We have expressed our opposition at the expert levels, but if it is approved, we will be obligated to implement it." This is the first time the Minister of Communications has officially spoken out against this proposal. Previously, Hamid Fattahi, the Deputy Minister of Communications, had also reported the ministry's opposition to this plan for "legal and technical" reasons. Azari Jahromi, in his statements today to reporters, also rejected the notion that the reason for presenting this plan is the lack of "competence" of the Ministry of Communications and operators to enforce sovereign regulations and filter the cyberspace. He added that currently, "the duty of filtering cyberspace according to Article 21 of the Computer Crimes Law has been entrusted to internet operators." The Minister of Communications emphasized that in order to ensure "the quality of service provision, the filtering and cleansing section cannot be separated from the network," and for this reason, operators, as "service providers," have also taken on the issue of "access filtering." Azari Jahromi also stated that if the internet gateway is handed over to the armed forces of the Islamic Republic, it must be clarified who will bear the costs of providing the equipment for this plan and its financial burden. According to him, if this plan is approved and becomes law, if the "financial burden" is placed on the government, the Guardian Council will not agree to it. The Minister of Communications also pointed out another contentious issue regarding the determination of the judiciary's powers. He stated that part of the supervision over cyberspace and the internet is the responsibility of the judiciary based on Article 25 of the Constitution, and handing over the internet gateway to the armed forces complicates the situation. The proposal to increase the usage rates of foreign messaging applications by two to ten times, which is suggested in this plan, and the transfer of the difference to the accounts of domestic messaging applications, is described by Jahromi as a "type of anti-advertising" for supporting domestic messaging applications, and he has warned about its "counterproductive effect." He stated, "This issue brings psychological problems and causes people to resort to illegal methods to use applications and circumvent the counting method." Previously, Mehdi Sheikh, a member of the Cultural Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, had also stated that given the lack of trust among the Iranian people towards domestic messaging applications, the plan to strip the internet gateway from the government and hand over the internet servers to the armed forces would create another challenge and put the military "against" the people. Sheikh expressed hope that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic would not want to "get involved in disputes that have nothing to do with them." He explicitly stated that "one of our biggest problems is that we cannot build trust for people to refer to domestic messaging applications; because they still do not trust that their information will not be used for security purposes." The plan to separate the management of the international gateway (internet) from the government is seen in Article 12 of the "Regulation of Social Messaging Applications" plan, which is also being reviewed in the virtual space working group of the Cultural Commission of the parliament. Article 12 of this plan states: "Digital border guarding and cyber defense of the country and preventing unauthorized exploitation of virtual data at the entrances and exits of bandwidth will be carried out by relevant authorities with the focus on the General Staff of the Armed Forces. The limits and boundaries will be approved by the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces based on the proposal of the General Staff of the Armed Forces."