7. DNS (Yes, It was the DNS).

The final nail in the coffin was the mass outage of the DNS servers of most internet provides. People found cleaver way of smuggling data via DNS (dnstt or alternatives). And the DNS servers were not provisioned to handle such a heavy traffic. So everything started to crash. Even local .ir based websites and apps.

6. Reluctance & dissident

Many refused to join & use local messaging & social apps promoted by the regime. Of course, all content on those are heavily censored and monitored. This resulted on huge economic impact and mass layoffs. Creating heavy burden on the regime for losing tax revenues, having to pay for unemployment insurance, ....

Some internet providers were rumored to be near bankruptcy.

5. Starlink

Since Starlink does not charge Iranian users for monthly fees, the price of the (illegally smuggled) terminals skyrocketed to around US$4000 in black market. Despite the fact that owning a terminal is heavily criminalized, the demand increased.

The regime had to forbid import of fridges, washing machines and dishwashers from Kurdistan by Kolbars. Since many terminals fit in them.

4. Github, SourceForge, Next.js, Vercel, Google Fonts, ...

Websites operators & programmers (governmental & private) struggled to keep their websites & apps going. So the regime was forced to gradually open some of those resources from 12th April.

They closed Github again on 18th May since it has become a resource for censorship circumvention tools and solutions.

2. Outdated Assisted-GNSS data

While the government has heavily invested on local navigation apps (Balad & Neshan) and alternative to Uber (Tapsi & Snapp). They gradually stopped to function properly. They depend on Google & Apple APIs to locate the user if the phone could not lock to GNSS satellites.

3. Expired Let's Encrypt certs

They tried to restore it on 12th April. But failed to open DNS-01 challenge.

1. Google Search (continued).

Unlucky for the regime, people found clever ideas to smuggle data via domain-fronted HTTP/SOCKS5 proxy tunneling traffic through Google Apps Script. Or to access other Google services (Gmail, Maps, News, ....).

1. Google Search (continued)

Since the default search engine on most mobile phones and PCs is Google, Most Iranians are not aware of the existence of local alternatives. People were clueless to find even the governmental websites. So they opened it back on 16th April.

Google's crawlers had to be also allowed to access local websites (on 27th April). To provide updated search results.