Why Iran’s next internet blackout is unlikely to happen

At about 7 in the morning on February 28, Cloudflare's traffic chart for Iran fell off a cliff. American and Israeli aircraft were over the country, and Ali Khamenei was dead. By that evening, the number had gone below 1% of what it had been the week before.

15 hours later, a Polymarket contract asking whether there would be a total internet blackout in Iran resolved to Yes.

The same question is running again. The current event has 4 dates on it, and the wording is identical. What interested us was the August 31 contract, which costs 7 cents.

If Cloudflare traffic falls to 1% of the last 4 weeks' maximum for 6 straight hours, then the contract will resolve to Yes.

This is quite important because Cloudflare only sees traffic leaving Iran. The state intranet the Revolutionary Guards have been building since 2013 carries domestic traffic and never crosses that line. Which is why the country can still have access to the internet, but the market could resolve to Yes regardless.

It happened in February, and the contract paid.

• The February shutdown ran 88 days, the longest any country has ever recorded
• It continued straight through the April 8 ceasefire and ended only when President Pezeshkian ordered it to on May 25
• Add January's 20-day protest cut, and Iranians have spent 108 of this year's 226 days offline

So why bet on No August 31? Because nothing has happened since May 26. American strikes ran 13 consecutive nights in July, and the network stayed up. Plus, there has been no strike on Iranian soil since July 29. It appears that both sides have somewhat calmed down this month, which significantly reduces the likelihood of an internet outage in August.