Iran was plunged into an internet blackout Saturday after Israel and the U.S. launched military strikes around the country, according to a global internet monitor.

Within hours of the strikes — which officials said targeted infrastructure and killed dozens of senior regime figures at a compound in Tehran— NetBlocks CEO Alp Toker confirmed connectivity started “flatlining.”

“We’re tracking the ongoing blackout, but our assessment is that this is straight out of Iran’s wartime playbook and consistent both technically and strategically with what we saw during the 2025 Twelve-Day War with Israel,” Toker told Fox News Digital.

“Iran’s internet connectivity is now flatlining around the 1% level, so the original blackout the regime imposed during the morning has been consolidated,” he confirmed.

“The blackout was imposed just after 7:00 UTC, not long after the attack on the Iranian regime compound,” Toker clarified, adding that Iran had been largely offline for approximately 12 hours following the attack.

“At 06:10 UTC, there is the main compound strike; at 07:10 UTC, telecoms disruption starts; at 08:00 UTC, the blackout is largely in effect; and by 08:30 UTC, connectivity flatlines.”

“Wartime national blackouts are exceedingly rare around the world, and it’s something we’ve only really seen at this scale in Iran,” he said.

In the wake of the attack, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that the “heavy and pinpoint” bombing in Iran “will continue uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

He claimed Iranian security forces and members of the regime’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were already seeking immunity. He urged them to “peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots.”

“We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces no longer want to fight and are looking for Immunity from us,” Trump said in the post. “As I said last night, ‘Now they can have Immunity; later they only get Death!’”

Toker argued the timing of the blackout suggested it was imposed deliberately as the regime sought to secure communications amid fears of further targeting.

TRUMP TELLS IRANIANS THE ‘HOUR OF YOUR FREEDOM IS AT HAND’ AS US-ISRAEL LAUNCH STRIKES AGAINST IRAN

“The Iranian regime will have deployed this new blackout to counter potential cyberattacks during their own military operation, but also to avoid leaking the locations of senior regime figures through metadata and user-generated content,” he said.

“Communications would have been limited, and Iran’s leadership would have proceeded with the assumption that all communications, including satellite or whitelisted networks, carry risks,” he said before claiming that “paranoia would be well grounded at this point, with the blackout a belated but direct response to that.”

“Those participating directly would already know to avoid technology that could betray their whereabouts,” Toker said.

“However, the metadata may well have played a part in determining that the meeting of regime leaders was being held at the Tehran compound, who was in attendance, and at what time.”

DID THEY GET HIM? KHAMENEI’S FATE REMAINS UNKNOWN AFTER ISRAEL-US STRIKE LEVELS HIS COMPOUND

Toker revealed that the broader network around the regime leaders and around the compound wouldn’t have had the same strict restrictions.

“This kind of adjacent ‘background noise’ can be correlated against other intelligence sources to build an understanding of activity on the ground,” he added.

“Smartphones are a readily available, almost ‘free’ source of intelligence, and even when locked down, they eventually connect to international online services and generate insights that can be used to pinpoint regime figures,” Toker said.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“In the aftermath of Saturday’s strike, this concern will have been high on the remaining Iranian leadership’s minds, especially if they didn’t have a clear and specific understanding of how the meeting was compromised.”

Iran has previously imposed sweeping internet shutdowns during periods of domestic unrest, including nationwide protests in January, which saw thousands killed, often seeking to curb the spread of information and restrict coordination.

Related Article

Women’s rights groups and activists hailed the European Commission’s decision on accessible abortion across Europe, calling it a “historic” move for women’s rights and European democracy.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The move marks an unusual step taken by the European Union, as healthcare policy is typically determined at a national level.

On Thursday, the European Commission confirmed member states can use an EU social fund to provide access to safe and legal abortion for women who are barred from doing so in their home country.

Member states can make use of the bloc’s existing European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), which contributes to social, education, employment and healthcare policies, voluntarily and in accordance with their domestic laws to provide such support.

“We were very aware of the competence that the European Union has in this area, which is restricted,” Europe’s Associate Director for the Center for Reproductive Rights Katrine Thomasen told Euronews, pointing to the fact that the bloc can support, coordinate or supplement the actions of members states, but cannot impede on national laws, such as healthcare policies.

The Commission stopped short of creating a new funding mechanism, which was requested by the European Parliament in a non-binding resolution adopted in December.

Critics argued that by declining to establish a dedicated fund and instead referring to an existing one, the EU was effectively failing to act and rejecting the proposal.

However, women’s rights organisations say the decision affirms that the EU has the competence to act on sexual and reproductive heath and creates a pathway towards accessible abortion.

“It was previously not clear that member states could use EU funding to provide abortion care to women facing barriers,” Thomasen said, “the Commission’s decision is really the first time that it is affirming and deciding that EU funds can be used in this way”.

Member states that wish to benefit from the ESF+ to offer accessible abortion services will now need to establish programmes and define how patients can benefit from it.

‘My Voice, My Choice’

The Commission’s decision came in response to a call made by the citizens’ initiative “My Voice, My Choice” for the creation of an EU solidarity mechanism to guarantee safe and affordable access to abortion for all women.

“My Voice, My Choice” is a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), a mechanism that allows citizens to call on the European Commission to propose new legislation.

If an initiative gets the support of at least one million people across at least seven EU countries, it must be discussed by the European Parliament, while the European Commission has a timeframe to either set out legislative measures or provide justification for not doing so.

“My Voice, My Choice” collected 1,124,513 signatures across all 27 countries.

“My Voice, My Choice started on the streets, it started with a group of women who had had enough that women are secondary citizens,” the initiative’s coordinator Nika Kovač told Euronews.

“We decided to take action and we brought something to the table. We brought our own chair to the places where we usually don’t have the chairs,” Kovač added.

The movement gained cross-border momentum, with women’s rights activists mobilising across Europe. With over one million followers on Instagram, “My Voice, My Choice” also built a strong online presence.

Dutch journalist Belle de Jong campaigned for the initiative in Malta, where abortion remains criminalised and heavily restricted. She described the challenges of organising on the ground, noting that many women were reluctant to take to the streets because of stigma and fear of legal consequences.

De Jong told Euronews that the campaign’s success in Malta was largely because it was online, “so people didn’t have to go out into the streets or show their face,” she said, adding that she collected more than 4,000 signatures for Malta, more than double she expected.

“Thanks to My Voice, My Choice, we no longer have an excuse to prosecute women for accessing healthcare, because we’re paying for them to go abroad with this EU mechanism. So it really begs the question: when are we going to decriminalise it? That will be our next fight in Malta,” she added.

The decision sparked a range of reactions from politicians

Several members of the European Parliament have expressed satisfaction after the Commission’s statements.

“For the first time the Commission has confirmed that countries can use EU funds to support access to abortion care. This is a victory for European women”, said Slovenian Socialist MEP Matjaž Nemec, who penned a letter to the Commission ahead of the decision.

Valérie Hayer, President of Renew Europe, said the decision “marked real progress for women’s rights,” underlining that the Commission had never before stated so clearly that EU funding can support access to safe abortion.

Other MEP’s, including Emma Fourreau from the Left group and French MEP Mélissa Camara from the Greens/EFA group considered the move a step forward, but would have liked to see a dedicated budget.

On the other side, far-right Spanish party Vox claimed that the Commission has rejected the “My Voice, My Choice” initiative, as there will be no specific fund to finance abortions abroad. “The Commission is just trying to politically save the initiative by pointing out existing instruments,” a press release from the party states.

The Italian anti-abortion association “Pro Vita & Famiglia” (Pro Life and Family) also considered that the initiative was rejected, while criticising its opening up to the use of ESF+ money to finance reproductive healthcare. “We ask the Italian government not to use this money to promote abortions”, said spokesperson Maria Rachele Ruiu.

Abortion policies across the European Union

Some EU countries have highly restrictive laws on abortion rights. A total ban is in force in Malta, where abortion is not allowed under any circumstances, while in Poland it is permitted only when conception follows sexual violence or when there is a risk to the woman’s health.

In January 2021, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal banned abortions in cases of fetal malformation, which until then had been the most frequent reason for terminating pregnancies in the country.

Several EU countries have taken steps to guarantee the right to safe abortions. France, for instance, made it a constitutional right, while Luxembourg and the Netherlands have removed mandatory waiting periods.

Sweden, France, and the Netherlands rank best in the European Union for abortion rights, according to the European Abortion Policies Atlas 2025. Malta and Poland remain at the bottom of the ranking, along with Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco.

Some countries have more relaxed laws, but they lack legal protections that fully decriminalise abortion, wide service availability, national health coverage, or government-led information on the matter.

Other member states have recorded new restrictions, increased harassment of abortion providers, and the spread of disinformation on the topic.

Many Americans were alarmed recently when immigration officers in Minneapolis took custody of a 5-year-old boy and sent him and his father to a Texas detention center. But he was no outlier.

The government has been holding hundreds of children and their parents at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, about 75 miles south of San Antonio. Some have been detained for months.

The Department of Homeland Security has strongly defended the quality of care and conditions there.

Here are key findings from an Associated Press report on how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement is shaping life inside the facility.

Detention of children has been rising

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement booked more than 3,800 children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration, according to an AP analysis of data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.

On an average day, more than 220 children were being held, with most of those detained longer than 24 hours sent to Dilley. More than half of Dilley detainees during the early part of the Trump administration were children, the AP analysis found.

Since being reopened last spring, the number of people detained at Dilley has risen sharply and reached more than 1,300 in late January, according to researchers. Nearly two-thirds of children detained by ICE in the early months of the Trump administration were eventually deported.

ICE holds many children longer than 20-day limit

The government is holding many children at Dilley well beyond the 20-day limit set by a longstanding court order.

“We’ve started to use 100 days as a benchmark because so many children are exceeding 20 days,” said Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children’s Rights, who visits Dilley regularly to ensure compliance. In a visit this month, Welch said she counted more than 30 children who had been held for over 100 days.

Many settled families among those currently detained

When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all the families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico.

But many of those now sent to the facility have lived in the U.S. several years, according to lawyers and other observers, meaning children are being uprooted from the familiarity of schools, neighborhoods and many of the people who care for them.

Parents Allege Deficient Care

Parents and children recounted stressful conditions inside Dilley, including experiences that raise questions about the quality of care being provided.

A 13-year-old girl cut herself with a plastic knife after staff withheld prescribed antidepressants and denied her request to join her mother down the hall, the mother told the AP.

Another mother said when her 1-year-old daughter developed a high fever and vomited, medical staff repeatedly offered only acetaminophen and ibuprofen before she was eventually admitted to hospitals with bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach viruses. ICE disputed her account, saying the baby “immediately received proper care.”

Other families described more routine problems, like the difficulty of getting children to sleep in quarters where lights are kept on all night and of stomach aches caused by foul drinking water.

Both adults and children described the often overwhelming stress of being detained that has caused many to despair.

ICE, DHS defend Dilley

DHS did not respond to detailed questions about Dilley submitted by the AP. But both DHS and ICE sharply refuted allegations of poor care and conditions in statements issued this week.

“The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units in a safe, structured and appropriate environment,” ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement.

Dilley provides medical screenings and infant care packages as well as classrooms and recreational spaces, ICE said.

Once in full operation, Dilley is expected to generate about $180 million in annual revenue for CoreCivic, the for-profit prison company that operates it under contract with ICE, according to the company’s recent filing with securities regulators.

In response to questions from the AP, a CoreCivic spokesman said no child at Dilley “has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment.” The company said detainees receive comprehensive care from medical and mental health professionals.

Questions about oversight

The increased detention of families comes as the Trump administration has gutted an office responsible for oversight of conditions inside Dilley and other facilities.

In years past, investigators found problems at Dilley, including consistently inadequate staffing and disregard for the trauma caused by the detention.

A special committee recommended that family detention be discontinued except in rare cases, and the Biden administration began phasing it out in 2021. Dilley was closed in 2024. But in reopening it, the Trump administration has completely reversed course.