Iran blocking foreign, domestic Web sites to curb anti-government activists

Ever since the disputed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June elections led to wide-scale protests, Iran's leaders have been cracking down on the tech-savvy opposition movement with the Revolutionary Guard and police blocking millions of foreign and domestic Web sites, including some Google services, CNN and the BBC.

Iran's leaders say these measures are necessary to counter efforts by the United States and other Western countries. "They are trying to defeat the Islamic republic through the Internet," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said in January. But until this week, government authorities had been aided by U.S. trade policy that prevented American companies from exporting social media technology to Iran as part of a broad effort to prevent the spread of technology to the Islamic republic. Now, the Treasury Department, at the request of the State Department, has decided to allow companies such as Google and Microsoft to export free mass-market software to Iran, as well as Sudan and Cuba. The U.S. action comes at a time when Iranian authorities have created cyber-intelligence units that are developing new methods to seek out and snare the opposition, including fake Facebook accounts. Authorities also are contemplating the creation of a national Internet that would approve which sites could be available in the Islamic republic. The government has also enacted a law that threatens bloggers with jail time if they "defame sanctities" -- a broad accusation in Iran -- in their postings. The new efforts mean that every time opposition bloggers in Iran fire up a laptop, they risk a visit by the cyber-police.