Iranian Australian Hussein* needed to hear his mother’s voice to know she was safe.
For almost a week, his mother and other relatives in Iran had been cut off as the country’s authoritarian regime imposed a communications blackout in an attempt to repress escalating anti-government protests.
Then on Tuesday evening, Hussein’s phone lit up with a call from his mother in Tehran.
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After confirming his other relatives were alive, Hussein, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns, began asking his mother about the regime’s attacks on anti-government protesters that has seen thousands killed over the past two weeks.
When his mother, who with no access to social media had relied on state-run broadcasts during the blackout, labelled the demonstrations “pro-government”, Hussein scoffed that the regime’s narrative could not be trusted.
“As soon as I said that I could hear her talking to someone else on the line,” he said.
“I couldn’t hear the third person but she told me they said ‘quickly cut off the conversation’.”
Her final words to Hussein on the call, before it ended, after less than two minutes, were “don’t worry”.
“It’s the last thing I heard,” he said.
Australia’s Iranian diaspora typically rely on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to communicate with family and friends in Iran.
When authorities partially eased restrictions on Tuesday, some Iranians were able to make outbound international calls. It meant Iranian-Australians waited to receive phone calls, which experts say are routinely monitored by state authorities, to find out if loved ones were alive.
A small number of Iranians have also risked their lives to use Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system, and share images and videos about the regime’s brutal response to the protests.
The country’s internet shutdown, which began on 8 January, remains in place and Australia’s Iranian community have held small demonstrations against the regime this week.
President of the Australian Iranian community organisation, Siamak Ghahreman, said six people this week told him calls from Iran after the communication restrictions eased that they believed had been monitored.
“They said when speaking to a relative this voice comes up and tells them the same thing: ‘you need to hang up now’,” he said.
“They didn’t do this before. They normally listen in hiding but now they are not even hiding it. They want you to know you are being listened to and to be quiet.”
The vice-president of the Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria, Kambiz Razmara, said Iranians in Australia had speculated that their phone calls to family members back home had been monitored.
“When they’ve started speaking about the troubles in Iran, the calls have disconnected,” he said.
“When you have phone-to-phone direct communication, the government can control that, which is what’s happening at the moment.”
The director of the Iranian and Middle Eastern Studies Center at California State University, Sahar Razavi, said telecommunications surveillance by Iranian security and intelligence forces was a longstanding practice.
“The Islamic Republic has a very well oiled machine when it comes to surveillance,” she said.
“It’s common for authorities to listen in on calls and intercepting calls to get a finger on the pulse of what’s happening and also to potentially find and chill any dissent.”
Razavi, an Iranian-American, said this week she received two calls from relatives in Iran who were “extremely reserved”.
“They were aware that they could be under surveillance of some kind,” she said.
Razavi said while WhatsApp was widely used by Iranian diaspora it was known to be ‘“vulnerable to surveillance” by the Iranian and other foreign governments.
“We still use it but we use it cautiously,” she said.
She said state surveillance was likely to ramp up during periods of conflict.
The protests that have swept through the country in recent weeks are among the most destabilising episodes of unrest the Iranian regime has faced in years.
While there are reports that more than 2,500 people have been killed so far, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists news agency, unofficial estimates are as high as 12,000.
The protests, initially sparked by the country’s economic crisis and concerns about mismanagement by the country’s theocratic leaders, spiralled into a wider anti-government movement, with protesters chanting “death to the dictator”, a reference to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
News of the regime’s violent response has trickled out during the blackout, including reports of hundreds of protesters sustaining eye injuries from gunshots.
*Name has been changed
