Iran Grinds to a Halt as US-Israel Attacks Spread Across Multiple Fronts

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The weekend strikes by the United States and Israel have caused a total internet outage across Iran. More than 90 million people have been affected by the disruption.

The internet blackout in Iran entered its fourth day. Data from the independent internet watchdog NetBlocks on Tuesday, 3 March 2026, indicated that the total internet outage had exceeded 72 hours in the country.

CNBC International noted that only 1% of the population had normal connectivity during the outage, cited on Wednesday, 4 March 2026.

According to NetBlocks, access was cut by the regime. However, the local authorities have not commented on the matter.

It is not surprising that Iran would cut the internet domestically. The government has been known to implement similar policies during social unrest in the past, including January last year for several weeks.

Yet another possibility has been raised by some analysts. They say there are additional factors contributing to this internet disruption, namely cyberattacks. This suggests that the US-Israel strike on Iran is not limited to the physical space, such as missiles and drones, but also extends into the digital space through attacks on critical internet infrastructure.

‘Historically, the regime’s go-to tactic during crises has been to cut off internet access to control the domestic narrative and mask internet security crackdowns,’ said Kathryn Raines, head of cyber threat intelligence at Flashpoint.

‘We also know that the US-Israel cyber operations conducted in parallel deliberately target telecommunications infrastructure to disrupt the command-and-control networks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during kinetic strikes,’ she added.

Cyberattacks are indeed increasing and are believed to originate from US and Israeli actors. They have targeted Iranian websites and internet infrastructure, including breaching the popular religious calendar app Badesaba.

Within that app, the attackers embedded a message for the Iranian armed forces to surrender and wrote ‘it’s time for payback’.