‘Ceasefire violated’: US fury after Iran targets Kuwait base

Summary

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Iran: The Latest

Episode: ‘Ceasefire violated’: US fury after Iran targets Kuwait base
Date: May 28, 2026
Host: Roland Oliphant (with Lottie Tiplady Bishop and guest Alp Toka)

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Episode Overview

This episode delivers an urgent update on escalating US-Iran tensions following a major breach of the ceasefire, featuring frontline reporting and deep-dive analysis. The discussion pivots between the military action surrounding Iran’s attack on a Kuwait-based US airbase, dramatic shifts in US rhetoric and diplomacy, domestic US political repercussions, and the ongoing battle for control of information in the region—highlighted by Iran’s record-breaking internet blackout. Later, guest Alp Toka, founder of NetBlocks, provides expert insight on the phenomenon of state-imposed internet shutdowns.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Crisis Point: Ceasefire Breach and Military Escalation

(01:49–07:30)

• Roland Oliphant summarizes breaking events:
  • Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) targeted a US base after the US struck Iranian drone operations near the Strait of Hormuz.
  • US officials claim the strikes were "purely defensive" and intended to maintain the ceasefire.
  • Kuwait confirms its response to missile and drone attacks.
• Israel reports Hezbollah-linked aircraft activity and intense combat in southern Lebanon, with mass evacuations in Tyre.

“It's a violation of the ceasefire, which is new. It puts this agreement that's apparently on everyone's desk in the bin.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (01:49)

• Discussion of the practical collapse of the nominal ceasefire, ongoing since April 17th.
• The Lebanese peace talks are deemed largely symbolic as Israel remains in direct conflict with Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government.

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2. Geopolitics Meets Domestic US Politics

(07:30–14:12)

• US political reaction to the latest fighting, including Donald Trump’s stance:
  • Trump rejects Iranian claims about a draft deal.
  • Renewed confidence following electoral wins in Kentucky and Texas appears to reduce US urgency for a deal.

“Now they are changing tack. This is obviously really important, because it puts this agreement that's apparently on everyone's desk in the bin, basically.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (09:47)

• The interplay between the Iran conflict and US midterms:
  • Public frustration over the war’s impact on cost of living (fuel, flights).
  • Trump’s statements minimize economic hardship: “I don’t care about the midterms.”

“When we do get to November... it's becoming increasingly unlikely that that person is going to be a Republican... if they've been party to or parroting all this rhetoric about how the Iran war is necessary.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (12:30)

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3. Diplomatic Deadlock: The Failed Draft Deal

(14:12–19:28)

• Iran publicizes an (unverified) memorandum of understanding with major concessions from the US.
• The White House brands the text "a complete fabrication."
• Trump: “Nobody will control the strait, but we will oversee it.” He rejects releasing frozen Iranian assets: “When they behave, they’ll get their money.”
• Trump’s rhetoric escalates (“threatened to blow Oman up if they didn’t stop having these conversations”), signaling both a bluff and frustration.

“I think what we are seeing here is the whole conflict has been a humongous global game of chicken, but it is really now coming to like the final rounds.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (16:00)

• Persistent stalemate anticipated; Trump conveys less urgency to compromise.

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4. Is Escalation Likely? US Arsenal and Strategy

(19:28–23:25)

• US missile stocks and interceptors depleted, restocking projected to take years.
• Internal divides in Trump’s cabinet: Rubio urges diplomacy; Hegseth suggests force; Trump aims for a hard bargain or stalling.
• “Olive branch or smart bomb” strategy: mixed signals.

“I'm not sure. Maybe limited strikes. I also could see, like, one big, quite extreme overnight strike where they try and teach Tehran a lesson.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (22:13)

• Trump's silence on Truth Social interpreted as seriousness or high-level negotiations underway.

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5. US Public Mood and Political Fallout

(23:25–26:13)

• Rising fuel prices, economic woes, and “war fatigue” dominate the mood outside Washington.
• Deepening Republican rift: isolationists (Tucker Carlson-types) now marginalized by Trump.
• For many Americans, justifications for the Iran war don’t resonate; frustration mounts:

“If you're like a working mum who can't fill her car up anymore, Trump and Rubio and all of his cabinet parroting Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, doesn't really make any sense to you.”
—Lottie Tiplady Bishop (23:45)

• Coverage is more intensive in the UK/Europe than in the US—American attention is waning, shifting from fear to irritation.

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6. Iran’s Internet Blackout: Authoritarian Censorship in the Digital Age

(27:42–43:04)
Guest: Alp Toka, Founder of NetBlocks

• Current status: Iran’s 88-day internet blackout is partially lifted, but remains heavily filtered, throttled, and impaired.
  • Each shutdown leaves connectivity progressively more restricted.
• Historical context:
  • Iran’s blackout is the “longest national outage in history” of the modern internet, surpassing Myanmar (2021) and Sudan (2019, 2021).
  • Unlike North Korea/China (closed by design), Iran shifted from open to closed—a unique and significant development.

“Each time authorities switch off the Internet, it always comes back in a more diminished form... more restrictions, more filtering in place.”
—Alp Toka (29:42)

• State censorship trend:
  • Difficulties for Iran in building technical capacity for full censorship compared to China.
  • Filtering now impairs even domestic services; censorship tech is overloaded.
• The evolution and mission of NetBlocks:
  • Started post-2011 UK riots and Turkish protests; now a global resource.
  • Focus on verification, human-driven data analysis—“still a manual process of verification, data-driven reporting.”

“When countries do go that way [shutdowns], they double down and the durations and severities are longer.”
—Alp Toka (41:48)

• Global patterns:
  • Fewer shutdowns overall, but longer, more severe when they occur.
  • Democratic nations, too, grapple with censorship boundaries.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Iranian claims about US sanctions concessions (Trump):

  “He said, nobody will control the strait, but we will oversee it.”
  —Lottie Tiplady Bishop (15:04)

• On Trump's approach to negotiations:

  “I will give you what you want when you give me what I want. And Iran is saying the same.”
  —Lottie Tiplady Bishop (16:00)

• On the US arsenal:

  “Even now, their full arsenal won't be restocked until 2029.”
  —Lottie Tiplady Bishop (19:28)

• On the latest US mood:

  “The wind has gone out of their sails.”
  —Lottie Tiplady Bishop (25:07)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:49: Ceasefire violation declared; Iran targets Kuwait US base
• 07:30: US official response to the breach, Trump’s changing rhetoric
• 09:47: White House: “Complete fabrication” of Iranian circulated draft deal
• 12:30 & after: US domestic political calculations and voter frustration
• 15:04: Trump’s Cabinet meeting, hardline statements on control of Strait of Hormuz
• 17:18: Difficulties of Trump’s team in maintaining coherent negotiations
• 19:28: Military cost and depleted US capability
• 23:25: American public mood and lack of support for the war
• 27:42: The mechanics and impact of Iran’s 88-day Internet blackout (Alp Toka)
• 41:48: Global trends in Internet shutdown practices

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Takeaways

• The fragile US-Iran ceasefire has been decisively breached, derailing ongoing diplomatic efforts.
• Trump’s more confident posture (following US domestic political wins) has reduced immediate pressure for compromise.
• Military options are limited; missile stocks are depleted, making protracted conflict costly and unsustainable.
• Public support in the US is eroding; the war’s rationale does not resonate amid economic pain.
• Iran’s record-long internet blackout reflects a growing authoritarian trend—every shutdown weakens digital freedoms further, and NetBlocks' work is crucial for global accountability.
• With both sides playing a high-stakes “game of chicken,” stalemate and unpredictability are likely to persist.

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Summary compiled from the May 28, 2026 episode of “Iran: The Latest.” For further developments or detailed reporting, follow The Telegraph’s correspondents and subscribe to the podcast feed.

Transcript

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

The telegraph.

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[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

It's a violation of the ceasefire, which is new. It puts this agreement that's apparently on everyone's desk in the bin.

[Alp Toka]

A short time ago, the United States

[Roland Oliphant]

military began major combat operations in Iran.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Today, President Trump says Iran's supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks.

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

Ayatollah say Aya the Pentagon is weighing

[Roland Oliphant]

a takeover of that island as a

[Alp Toka]

way to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

[Roland Oliphant]

Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Iran. The Latest It's Thursday, 28th May, 90 days since the war began and 50 since the ceasefire was declared. Later, we'll be speaking to Alp Toka, the founder of NetBlocks, about the phenomenon of Internet blockages like the one in Iran, and also to the Telegraph association associate news editor at the Washington bureau, Lottie Tiplady Bishop, to discuss Donald Trump's latest remarks in the news from Washington. But first, a few news updates. Top of the agenda this morning is another exchange of fire between the United States and Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The Iranians say they targeted a US Air base on Thursday after the US military carried out what a Washington official said was strikes on an Iranian drone operation near the Strait of Hunt Hormuz. Reuters, who say they spoke to a U.S. official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about military operations, say that officials said the military shot down four Iranian attack drones and stuck a ground control station in the port of Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone. These actions were measured, purely defensive and intended to maintain the ceasefire, the official said. The IRGC in turn said it targeted a U.S. base from which it said an early morning U.S. attack near Bandar Abbas airport was launched. They did not identify the base or say which country it was in. Kuwait, which does host a large US air base, said it was responding to missile and drone attacks without saying where the attacks were coming from. Meanwhile, Israel, which is currently fighting the Iran backed militia Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, also reported sounding sirens regarding hostile aircraft activity in northern Israel. Those reports of hostile aircraft activity may have more to do with Hezbollah than with Iran itself. Least eight people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes this morning in and around the southern city of Tyre. Israel in turn says that one of its soldiers was killed by a Hezbollah drone. This came after the IDF yesterday ordered the residents of the entire city of Tyre that's home to approximately 174,000 people, to evacuate north. It later declared all areas south of Lebanon's Sarani River. That means an area roughly 40 km from the border and including Tyre as combat zones, and told residents of the entire area to evacuate north of the river ahead of attacks. Heavy fighting being reported from that area this morning. It comes ahead of Lebanese and Israeli military officials who are meant to hold security talks on Friday. In the U.S. those talks that have occurred on a kind of semi regular basis over the past month or so have extended a nominal ceasefire that went into effect on April 17th. Although as you can tell from the news I just read out before that, that ceasefire seems to be existing more on paper than in reality. Hezbollah, of course, is not part of those talks and it is Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government, that Israel is fighting in southern Lebanon. So in an important sense those talks are academic, a reminder. One of Iran's demands in its own peace talks with the Americans is that the war in Lebanon itself be included in a ceasefire. In other words, that Israel halt its offensive. And before we turn to our guests for the day, a bit of sports news in football. Iran has said it expects FIFA to facilitate multi entry visas for its team headed to the World Cup. Iran have qualified for the World cup and they are scheduled to play all three of their Group G matches inside the United States, although they have moved their training camp from Tucson in Arizona to Tijuana in Mexico to avoid complications with the Americans. Mehdi Taj, the head of the Iranian Football Federation, said FIFA is expected to deliver multiple a multiple entry visa so that the players can enter and return. That's enter the United States and return to Mexico. It's certain now that we'll go to Mexico. The team is preparing, he said. In the group stages, Iran will first play New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15 and will then face Belgium in the same city and Egypt in Seattle later in the group stage. Football is as big in Iran as it is anywhere else in the world, but the the team's World cup qualification has been slightly overshadowed or marred by the omission of their star striker. That's Sardar Azmoon, who has in the past scored 57 goals for Iran, previously played for Bayer Leverkusen and AS Roma, but he's been excluded from the squad. There are suspicions this is because he previously voice support for the anti government protests in January and he did face public criticism from Iranian state media, including accusations of treason after a photograph published in March showed him alongside the ruler of Dubai, which is where he currently lives. He said in an Instagram post that he'd rejected a very large financial offer from another country to play and described himself as a son of Iran. Will he be recalled to the squad? Well, I'd advise you to follow the Telegraph's award winning Sports desk on that question. I'm certainly not the man to ask, but they will be following the World cup very closely. That was the news. Now back to the question of diplomacy. Yesterday we reported that the Iranian government or Iranian state media had published what they said was a unfinalized but draft version of a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran. It claimed that the Americans would lift the blockade on Iran, allow Iran to maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz and extract fees in exchange for Iran itself allowing ships through. At the time, I expressed skepticism that the Americans had agreed to any such thing. Sure enough, yesterday Donald Trump flatly rejected those terms. Iran is very much intent, they want

[Alp Toka]

very much to make a deal.

[Roland Oliphant]

So far they haven't gotten there that

[Alp Toka]

we're not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be. Either that or we'll have to just finish the job.

[Roland Oliphant]

The White House brand of the text, a complete fabrication. Donald Trump says that Tehran is very much intent on reaching an agreement. And if you listen to our podcast yesterday, you had heard our own correspondent Akhtar McCoy give the same assessment of Iranian intentions. So where are the talks? They're obviously difficult. Glad to say that we're joined now by Lottie Tiplady Bishop, the Telegraph's associate news editor in Washington. Lottie, welcome to Iran. The latest. I was wondering if you're able to bring us up to speed on what the Americans are saying about this latest spate of fighting.

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

It's a violation of the ceasefire, which is new. So on Monday, when they exchanged fire, they were like, still not a violation of the ceasefire. And then again when they shot down drones, they said, we understand it's not a violation of the ceasefire. Now they are changing tack. This is obviously really important because it puts this agreement that's apparently on everyone's desk in the bin, basically.

[Roland Oliphant]

It is interesting, isn't it? So this is CENTCOM saying that it was a ballistic missile that was intercepted by Kuwaiti forces but was aimed at a US Base in Kuwait. As you say, in previous incidents, they've played this down and said the ceasefire is not actually breached. What's your sense from Washington about how significant that change in rhetoric is?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I think it's significant, but I also think it was on the cards. I think that Trump was kind of laying the groundwork for this yesterday in the Cabinet meeting when he made these comments about, oh, Iran thinks that they can outweigh me and essentially said, you know, I can wait forever. And I think that something has happened, probably the win of his picks in Kentucky and Texas over, I think it was the end of last week and then Tuesday night, which has filled him with confidence and kind of taken some of the pressure off to reach a deal and reopen the strait. And it's essentially kind of all to do with the midterms. The White House was really, really keen to get at least, like, a framework sorted on the way to peace before November's elections. But the win of Trump's two picks over the end of last week and the start of this week has now filled him with confidence and he thinks that he is no longer in danger in the midterms, which is probably not a very sensible view. He said yesterday in the Cabinet meeting, I don't care about the Midterms. I think it's an about turn from, you know, Friday through to Monday when we were going, oh, is it a capitulation? Is the US actually surrendering loads of stuff? And I think now he is actually going, well, I can wait it out a little bit longer.

[Roland Oliphant]

Well, actually, the domestic political costs don't seem to be as high as I feared and therefore I can. The pressure is slightly off to produce a deal. You said that's not a very sensible thing to think, to think he's out of trouble in the midterms. Why not?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I think it's probably not very sensible because, number one, a primary is very different to an actual election. And when we do get to November, the realities of the war, the conflict, the, like, shaky ceasefire are that at the moment people can't afford to fill up their cars, the cost of living is, is through the roof, summer is approaching, the cost of flights is only going to go up. People are getting really fed up. And when it comes to November and they have to choose the party to represent them in the House and the Senate, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that that person is going to be a Republican. It's even more unlikely that that person is going to be a Republican if they were handpicked by Donald Trump and have been party to or parroting all this rhetoric about how the Iran war is necessary. I think Trump said maybe a couple of weeks ago, he was asked about the price of petrol and he said, oh, it's peanuts, it's nothing. Then you have him yesterday saying, I don't care about the midterms. Right before he went to China, he made some comment that was like, oh, you know, the economic hardship is necessary for this war, which is not the reality of what American voters think. So I appreciate that. It's kind of weird to talk about domestic American politics on around the latest, but they really are all fused. And I do think that his renewed confidence yesterday, he's muddying the waters, is probably a better way to say it. Kind of laying the groundwork for actually, you know, maybe we're not going to get an agreement to agree on a deal at some point in the future, in the next couple of days. Maybe it's going to be next week, maybe it's going to be in two weeks time.

[Roland Oliphant]

Rubio was talking about that. He was saying, oh, a few more days, a few more days. He'd said, well, some progress, he's really saying, is imminent. Can you just take us through what. What happened in the Cabinet meeting yesterday? Iranian state media Published what they said was a kind of a draft. Not yet agreed, they said, but this is the draft framework of a minimum of understanding. Summarizing from memory, said basically the Americans will agree to lift their blockade of Iranian ports. We will reopen the strait. But the Americans also have agreed to withdraw their troops from the Gulf, basically, or from the vicinity of Iran, and also have agreed that Iran and the neighboring countries are going to be in charge of managing the Strait of Hormuz and will charge service fees, which I didn't think the Americans were going to go for. What did he actually say in the Cabinet meeting? How did that go down in America?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

Just a note on the draft that Iran said it had. The White House said that it was a complete fabrication, which is interesting. And then when we get to the Cabinet meeting, there were a couple of things Trump said that I thought were quite interesting. But he told, totally rubbished the idea of anyone being in control of the strait. He said, nobody will control the strait, but we will oversee it. So, I mean, I think that might just be like Trumpian ad libbing, or perhaps they are going to have a really big role, who knows? And he also, bizarrely, had a go at Oman. They've been speaking to Iran about when they reopened the strait, if they reopened the strait and this toll. And he threatened to blow Oman up if they didn't stop having these conversations, which is slightly rogue. And then when it comes to ending the blockade, reopening the strait. And also, I'm not sure if it was in this draft that Iran said it had, but we've definitely talked about it before the releasing of the frozen assets. Trump absolutely. He completely rubbished that. He said, I'm not accepting a crummy deal. He said, when they behave, they'll get their money. And I think that what we're kind of seeing here is the whole conflict has been a humongous global game of chicken, but it is really now coming to like the final rounds of the most intense game of chicken ever. And Trump is saying, you know, I will give you what you want when you give me what I want. And Iran is saying the same. I think that we are probably going to see, at least for the next few days to the end of this week, them entering another stalemate. I can't see it moving anywhere. Trump clearly, yesterday is, in my opinion, has changed his tune. He was very positive over the weekend, and now he's actually going, oh, you know what, maybe I don't have to accept your terms. Maybe I can wait out a Little bit longer.

[Roland Oliphant]

I must say, it did seem extraordinary to me, this Iranian claim that the Americans would agree to Iranian sovereignty over the strait or the releasing of frozen assets and things like this sounded slightly fanciful.

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

Well, I also think that it's annoying, but you do have to consider these things when Trump is in charge of these negotiations. We've written before about how a lot of the things that Trump parrots about the Iran war come from yes men, and that he struggles to get a grip really on what's going on because nobody actually tells him the truth or they give him half truths. And I could really see him saying, you know, do whatever it takes to make a deal. His team speaking to Pakistan, speaking to the Qataris, whoever them saying, oh, you know, we might agree to this. Iran coming away and going great, we've got everything we want. And then they go back to Trump and say, oh, we're right on the edge of making a deal. He truth socials saying, yeah, exactly. And then the reality is they can't agree to even agree what they're going to agree on to make a deal in the future. I think what we're lacking here is, don't get me wrong, I think that Trump's negotiators obviously know what they're doing to an extent. You know, the guys, the guys that are have are actual diplomats, not the real estate developers. But I think we're lacking some substance, which is why it keeps going so off piste.

[Roland Oliphant]

I'm wondering from what you were saying about the mood in Washington and people you're talking about, because you're saying, oh, maybe he's pushing back the urgency for a deal. You're not saying he's just walking away from it, you're talking about pushing it back maybe by some days or maybe weeks. But that suggests to me you think there's still appetite, is to come to an agreement and to end the war. To go back to war now and to inflict enough damage to change things is going to cost so much money and involves so much commitment that his calculation or the calculation of people around him that the least worst option now is to just end it with some kind of agreement. Is that your sense in Washington that that is where thinking is in the U.S. government?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I think they're very keen to end it. I agree. I also would just point out that I don't know if they can go back to war. I mean, they've just depleted their interceptors, they spent a fortune on chucking hundreds of thousand dollar missiles at drones that cost Like, a couple of grand. And I was reading something this morning that. That if they don't go back to war, even now, their full arsenal won't be restocked until 2029. So that I also would just say posit, like, can they actually go back to war? Is. Is Trump now stuck between a rock and a hard place? And in terms of them wanting to make a deal, I really do think that they want to make a deal, because I think it's beginning to just get in the way. I think Trump wants to move on to Cuba. I think he wants to move on to everyone. Talking about how beautiful the ballroom is and the reflecting pool. I think he's bored, actually, is the truth, and he's fed up of talking about it. And I think that you saw that in the Cabinet meeting yesterday, when I thought the actual dynamic was quite interesting. We had Trump in the middle, Rubio on one side, Hegseth on the other. J.D. vance, who last month was apparently being drafted into the negotiations to kind of make it all work and make it perfect and whatever, relegated to the other side of the table. The feed I was watching, you couldn't even see his face. And it seemed like Rubio was kind of the voice of reason saying, you know, ideally, we want a diplomatic solution. It could be hours, it could be days. He has been saying it could be hours or days for about a week now. Trump in the middle, squaring up a little bit and saying, I can wait as long as you need. And then Hegseth on the other side being like, yes, war, let's blow them all up. So I think that even Trump's top team can't quite agree, but the main thing that they are all working towards, yes, is ending it, because it's causing quite a lot of chaos internally, I suppose.

[Roland Oliphant]

The message there says to me, you have your diplomat on one side holding the olive branch, and you have your chief of the military on. On your other hand holding the sword. And that's your. It's your classic kind of negotiation. You know, you make your choice. Do you want to do a deal with me? I'd bring an olive branch in one hand, I'd bring a smart bomb in the other. You know, coming back to where we started with this shift in rhetoric, the Americans saying the ceasefire has now been breached by the Iranians. Does that mean, in your view, a resumption of war, return to hostilities or not?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I mean, given what we just discussed about how depleted their arsenal is, I'm not sure. Maybe limited strikes. I also could see like a one big quite extreme overnight strike where they try and teach Tehran a lesson. I think, totally honestly, I know this is maybe a bit of a cop out and not what you're meant to say when you're on like a geopolitical analysis podcast, but I just can't wait to see what Trump's truth is. I checked right before we, we hopped on and he hadn't truthed for seven hours.

[Roland Oliphant]

Oh, oh, let's have a look because

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I think that will really determine the mood.

[Roland Oliphant]

Oh, no, he hasn't, has he? 11 hours ago.

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

But even that's really telling because the man is constantly on truth social. So I think what we have to infer from that is yes, strikes are a possibility. Whether they are the most sensible option given the dire situation, I don't know. But what is happening right now is probably talks at length and when Donald Trump is quiet, you know, things are quite serious.

[Roland Oliphant]

Things are happening, things are happening behind the scenes and say he's quiet. All right, what is your sense of the kind of the zeitgeist in, in America at the moment and the, the kind of public mood related to this? You said prices at the petrol pump are going up and people are feeling it.

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I think people are fed up. I think that we've already seen and we have talked about it before, this split within the Republican Party of the kind of more isolationist, anti foreign war set who now are actually completely exiled, I would say, by Trump. Like you're sort of your Tucker Carlson's that, that kind of genre of people and also everyone that follows them, who probably won't vote at least MAGA anymore, which is, is a big problem. I think that the mood is much more amplified outside of Washington. But honestly, like even the people that I speak to here across the board are getting fed up. And I think that what kind of your average Joe, normal working American is struggling to comprehend is why this is necessary. And I don't think that if you're like a working mum who can't fill her car up anymore, Trump and Rubio and all of his cabinet parroting Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Doesn't really make any sense to you.

[Roland Oliphant]

How much are people talking about this? Is it really dominating the national conversation or is it, or is it, I don't know, is there something else that's, that's, that's bothering Americans at the moment?

[Lottie Tiplady Bishop]

I mean, for me as a Brit and I also, like, as a foreign journalist, I was surprised, I think when I first, when everything first happened about how quickly it was forgotten about. It's definitely not today. It is obviously because of the ceasefire violation, but it does seem to kind of slip down in terms of the news cycle, I would actually argue. I mean, perhaps I just think this because I am constantly talking to you guys about it, but it seems to me that it is slightly more amplified in the UK or at least in Europe, than it is here, which is ironic. But the people who I speak to who kind of work in politics and journalism and lobbying, it feels like it's gone from being something that was quite, really scary to just being irritating. I think people are irritated by it. And I also think that going back to what we said before, that's probably how Trump and his cabinet feel. They're a bit, I don't want to say over it, but I think that the wind has gone out of the of their sales.

[Roland Oliphant]

Telegraph Associate News Editor Lottie Tiplady Bishop, speaking to me from Washington after the break. Iran's Internet shutdown has been the longest ever recorded. But how exactly does one measure an Internet shutdown? How does it compare to others? And is the tactic of shutting down the web becoming more or less common? Stay tuned to find out.

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[Roland Oliphant]

Welcome back. You're listening to Iran the Latest with me, Roland Oliphant. Yesterday we reported on the partial lifting of Iran's record breaking Internet blackout. But what does that blackout tell us about the wider phenomenon of authoritarian regimes shutting down the Internet? The resort to web censorship as a method of social control? How easy is it? How does Iran's shutdown compare to others around the world? And is it becoming easier or more difficult for governments to impose? Well, earlier I spoke to Alp Turke. He's the founder and director of NetBlocks, the organization that describes itself as mapping Internet freedom in real time, which has become the Go to trusted source for monitoring of international Internet shutdowns. Here is our conversation. Netblocks has become the go to source, the kind of gold standard. Everyone is citing your work when they're talking about the Iranian Internet blackout, which is now easing off. And the reason we're saying it's easing off is partly our own reporting. But we're kind of, we're going to netblocks to kind of confirm whether it's true and whether what the Iranian government is saying is true. So I really wanted to talk to you about, about your work and how you do this. But first of all, I was wondering, going back to Iran. So the Iranian government obviously announced earlier this week that the blockade was going to be lifted. You've posted on, I think your latest update was yesterday, saying that some restrictions are still there, but it seems to have opened up. We reported on it yesterday. Our correspondent Akhtar McCoy has a piece in the paper today based on his first conversations with people in Iran since the Web came back. I was wondering if you've got any updates today about the restrictions. Is it more open than it was 24 hours ago? Are there still some restrictions lingering? Is it all back to normal as it was before the war began?

[Alp Toka]

So this restoration has been quite interesting. I think one of the key things about Iran's Internet blackouts is that each time authorities switch off the Internet, it always comes back in a more diminished form. There are always more restrictions, more filtering in place. But in this case in particular, we've seen that the restoration, while that connectivity has been restored, it's very heavily perturbed.

[Roland Oliphant]

So

[Alp Toka]

there is a worse performance, that there is more filtering in place, heavy filtering and connections can't be sustained to remote services. So you have a situation essentially where we're back at the point similar to where we were before the war. So that's the period between the January protests and the war, a period of heavy throttling and filtering. It's certainly not the type of Internet connectivity that we are used to in the free world. It is the kind of Internet where you can reach the outside, whereas during the war, that was essentially very difficult or impossible for almost everyone.

[Roland Oliphant]

So back to where we were after the January protests, but not to back to what Iranians had before that point.

[Alp Toka]

Exactly. And that's really consistent, I think, between those two blackouts that we've seen this year.

[Roland Oliphant]

The Iranian Internet outage, we're told it's the longest national outage in history. And when we say history, of course, the Internet isn't That old. So we're kind of discounting ancient Greece and Rome and the Aztecs and all of that. But I was wondering, and longest compared to what I mean, is it by a country mile or is it just edging somebody else there? How much significance should we place upon the length of this particular outage?

[Alp Toka]

So we do need to have a methodology here because there are shutdowns of all kinds of sizes and durations. I've heard of the brief disruption to London Underground WI fi being referred to as a shutdown. And that's obviously in a different ballpark to what we see when entire nations are switched off. So what we look at netblocks particularly focuses on nation scale Internet disruptions. Not necessarily the entire country, but certainly regional or national scale. And in this case, when we've been looking at the duration and the extent of it, we've been looking at similar nation scale disruptions that have happened. If I look at my kind of table or leaderboard of incidents, I can see that Myanmar, for example, is an incident that has lasted for a very long time. And there is still disruption to this day. But the core incident disruption in that case was a period of some 70 days during the Myanmar Internet shutdown. During the coup in 2021, we saw that there were daily moments when people could reconnect, when news could flow. It was a curfew style blackout. So that in this case is very significant. It had a major impact on society in Myanmar, but there was still that greater trickle of information due to the daily curfew style pattern. In that case, we take a look at Sudan. Extremely severe disruptions on the order of a month. And in that case, in over a month. And in that case, again, when you see that Sudan is. In 2019 and 2021, there were two major blackouts in Sudan.

[Roland Oliphant]

So that's during the revolution and then the subsequent military coup.

[Alp Toka]

Yeah. And in all those cases you'll notice that they are coup related or definitely government transition cases. So at this scale of severity, we're looking at that level of security incidents lasted a month, very severe, but then connectivity was restored. Those are the competitors for this. And Iran really stands out in being a near total blackout for almost everyone throughout those consecutive 88 days. So by all benchmarks in the space of national Internet shutdowns, in the history of the modern Internet, Iran qualifies. There are some earlier reports of, I think Libya many years ago during the fall of Gaddafi, having been offline for a while. The background on that, why it happened and the reason the base is kind of lost in time. I think people would have been using modems back then to connect mostly. And it's not really the same thing as a country falling offline today, but it's still somewhere in there in history that a country may have been offline for a bit longer. And then you have obviously China and North Korea, these are countries that develop their Internet infrastructure in parallel to the rest of the world. So they were never online in the first place. So then again, that's a different category. There's another parallel between Iran and China and also to a degree, North Korea in that these are the three nations that have developed their unparalleled Internet infrastructures. And of those three, Iran is the only nation that has gone from an open or semi open telecommunications model to a closed one. The other countries started off with that. So it's really, it's a whole category of its own, these group of countries.

[Roland Oliphant]

I was wondering, because you've been doing this for quite a few years and when we've got through the Iranian you stuff, I want to talk, to get you to talk about NetBlocks and how it came about and how you got into this and how you do what you do. But I was wondering what does this, this stand out unprecedented in time and severity? Iranian Internet shutdown. What does that tell you about, I suppose about the pattern or the trend or the fact that they went from an organically open Internet to a, to a restricted one. Does that mean it's now easier to do this or do you think they've struggled with it or does it mean other governments may end up doing the same thing?

[Alp Toka]

Well, it has been an easy ride for Iran to implement this kind of censorship infrastructure at scale. I think it's been quite difficult and this is partly because of users expectations. Businesses benefit from having open communications to the outside world. So that link there means that technically, while it might have been possible, there was a lot of pushback. But if we look at the technical aspect, Iran has also struggled, I think, to implement the technical vision that emerged of a resilient domestic Internet or intranet, because that domestic intranet has not really come anywhere near what say China is able to deliver. China is pushing for better. They're saying that, you know, in some degree their networks are faster, their infrastructure is better. You know, they're saying don't use international services, okay, we'll filter those as well. But we're also pushing the technology further. Whereas in Iran it's a bit of a, it may or may not work. You may be able to access your bank at times, it hasn't been a great time. And any tools that you use, then communications are filtered. It's not a great story. It's not something people willingly want to use, by and large. And the filtering equipment itself also is clearly showing signs of struggling with the load, the capacity. I think that when we see things like throttling on the network, as we do right now, to some degree, that's because the filtering mechanism is now so overloaded that it's also slowing down ordinary services as well as. So this filtering infrastructure was not really intended to do this kind of at this scale, to filter Internet connectivity.

[Roland Oliphant]

Tell us about UALP and NetBlocks. Because I remember speaking to you in, I think 2021 was a big time for Internet. You mentioned Myanmar there. There was obviously also the Indian government shut down the Internet in Kashmir at the time. And I remember at the time you telling me that effectively you were running the whole thing by yourself, I think, out of your bedroom and you hadn't slept for about 72 hours or something. I'm hoping that you've got more resources now than you had. But tell us the story of NetBlocks. How did it come about?

[Alp Toka]

I'm a techie. I've always been working in this field for as long as I can remember, but I work on network technologies in particular. So I was a developer, for example, on the engine that you'll find in your browser, in Chrome or in Safari. And networking for me is connecting people. That's something I've really taken seriously. So I think it kicked off with digital rights in the uk. When I remember there was this kind of push towards. It was something David Cameron said about potentially switching off the Internet during the riots.

[Roland Oliphant]

The riots in. When was that? 2011, was it? Those riots?

[Alp Toka]

Long time? Yeah, a long time ago. And that was a moment when things flicked me. You know, this can really come home and we need to keep a better track of it. I think there wasn't really systematic monitoring and people didn't understand what that meant for society then fast forward a few years. That's really when the inkling came, when I started pulling together some monitoring mechanisms just for my own curiosity. No reporting back then. Then I think so. My family's Turkish. And then in Turkey, 2013, 14, there were protests there as well and there were concerns about Internet restrictions and these kind of two investigations fused for me. I thought, you know, this is now happening in a lot of places that I know about that I care about and really reporting this can Help have a deterrent effect. I think if we can call these out, then they no longer happen in silence. Authorities can't just blame a cat walking into an exchange or something accidental happening if you have telemetry to prove it. And it really developed from there. When that reporting was effective, people from around the world started asking, I think it's happening here too. And we were able to report these or debunk them, assess why they might be happening. And it grew and it became global I think by the end of, certainly by the end of 2017. And it's been developing, growing strong ever since then. It's still a small team, it's not panic mode. I think that when you reached out back then, it was certainly pushing the limits in terms of just being in contact with people as well on the ground. Verification, that's also a key part of what I think is necessary to put out a good report. So we were talking with people tracking telemetry, worrying about how to store it, how to represent it, visualize it, and quite often writing the code as well to do this because it didn't exist there. So it was a multifaceted operation. It was very stressful. I think things have settled down a bit since then just because the workflows are there. It's still a human operation. We've tried using say AI, can it do anything? And I think that's shown that the key thing is here is human verification. We need to check that telemetry and actually validate it. So I think in one sense it hasn't been more automated. We're not able to just leave it up to a machine now. It's just as manual as it was then because I think like some parts of journalism and reporting, it's a manual process of verification, data driven reporting.

[Roland Oliphant]

Last question. Al, from your point of view, is there a trend that you can pull out about this phenomena of the Internet shutdown, the censorship and so on, Is it becoming more. I suppose the question is, is it becoming more common and governments are find it easier to do or is it actually becoming more difficult for them to do this?

[Alp Toka]

So our sense is that there are actually fewer Internet shutdowns and blackouts over time. The practice has become less frequent but more severe. When countries do go that way, they double down and the durations and severities are longer. And I think the other thing that I've noticed certainly from my where, where I started and it's doing a full circle in a way and coming back to the uk, we're now seeing various forms of moves to censor the Internet again or restrict certain groups. Okay, so you have, say, child age verification, but that also means there's more surveillance of individuals. And if then things should go wrong, now everyone has a mark on their head. Can we speak freely anymore? Can we speak anonymously? Where is the barrier between responsible connectivity and free speech? I think that question is now coming back, but fortunately we now have a decade of research, this body of research from around the world that can inform us on the right decisions and how we can reconcile responsible Internet with a free and open society.

[Roland Oliphant]

That was Alp Toka, the founder and director of NetBlocks. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back tomorrow. But until then, that was Iran the Latest Goodbye. Iran the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest in your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up to our new daily newsletter, Cables via our website or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine, for the latest. We are still on the same email address battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show Notes the producer is Peter Shevelin. The executive producers are Venetia Rainey and Louisa Wells.

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