Secret cross-border and VPN connections: How desperate Iranians stay in touch with relatives abroad
Somewhere on the border of Iran and Turkey, there is a person who provides a special service — helping Iranians living outside the country maintain contact with their loved ones inside Iran. His secret is simple: two phones — one connected to the Iranian network, the other to the Turkish one. This is necessary because international calls to Iran are blocked, writes the BBC.
Photo: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images
People outside Iran call him on his Turkish number via WhatsApp, and he then connects with their relatives using his Iranian phone.
He keeps the two phones next to each other so that people desperate to hear their loved ones in Iran can talk to them.
Since he is right on the border, his devices can connect to both the Turkish and Iranian mobile networks.
This is just one of the ways Iranians are bypassing wartime restrictions on internet and phone communications. However, such a service is expensive.
According to the BBC Persian service, including money transfer fees, a four or five-minute conversation costs approximately $38. Nevertheless, clients believe it is a justified price.
Sometimes people in Iran manage to call abroad themselves, but such calls rarely go through on the first try and usually cut off after two or three minutes.
He says that a gigabyte of internet traffic for a VPN can cost around $20 — a huge sum, considering that the minimum monthly salary in Iran is approximately $100.
"VPN prices have skyrocketed, and the connection is very unstable," says Hamid.
According to him, if the connection drops while using a VPN, the purchased traffic is lost, and it's impossible to get a refund.
"Every time I managed to connect to the internet — even for a short time — I would message everyone I knew, asking them to send their relatives' phone numbers so I could find out if they were okay and relay the news back," he says.
"When I call my mother and say the name of a child who asked about her, the joy in her voice changes my world," Hamid continues.
Negar (name changed), who lives in Toronto, Canada, said her family knows how worried she was about their safety during the anti-government protests in January.
"This time, when the internet was shut down, they started calling me directly themselves to say they were okay," she said.
According to Negar, such short calls help a little, but it's still not enough to calm down:
"The scariest part of this story is that they are under heavy bombardment, and yet they call me and say, 'We're fine, don't worry about us.' That's what kills me."
Shadi (name changed) lives in Melbourne, Australia, but her parents' home is in Tehran, in an area they call a "hornet's nest." It is located near a major oil depot that was hit on March 7, as well as near other strategic targets, including the Ministry of Defense.
"Usually, before calling us, they first contact other relatives and neighbors nearby to check if everything is okay and gather news," Shadi said. "Then they pass this information to us, and we share it with the rest of the family here."
She adds that loud explosions near the house greatly frighten her relatives, and her father stopped going for walks after "black rain" fell in Tehran following the strike on the oil depot.
Zahra lives in Europe and is very worried about her brother in Iran. She uses a VPN to access Telegram and stay in touch.
"If he disappears offline for more than half an hour or an hour, the worst thoughts start popping into my head," she says.
According to her, most of the time her family tries to stay home. They either don't go to work at all or only for a very short time.
"The sound of fighter jets and explosions is terrifying," her brother told her. "And there are patrols everywhere on the streets — standing at every intersection and looking straight into your eyes. If they don't like how you look, they stop you."
The need to use various apps and technical tricks to bypass restrictions makes it almost impossible to contact relatives who are not tech-savvy.
"Now the only way to contact my family is if they call me themselves," says Puneh, a woman in her thirties living in London. "I can't call them. Even such a simple thing creates a strange feeling, as if I have no control."
She said that the only person she manages to stay in touch with is her sister.
"Probably because she's more tech-savvy and finds ways to call. She's usually the one who brings me news about everyone else in the family," says Puneh.
Like many others, they have a two-way information exchange: the person inside Iran transmits family news, while the one abroad tells about the progress of the war — information unavailable inside Iran due to state censorship.
"Often my sister calls just to hear news from me," says Puneh. "It feels like each of us only has part of the story, and we're piecing it together through each other."