'I’ve heard nothing from my parents for 3 days': Iranian exile’s agony as bombs fall and internet blackout cuts off families

For more than six days, almost 90 million Iranians have been living under a total internet shutdown, with traffic to the outside world collapsing by around 99 per cent, according to internet monitoring experts.

The shutdown is one of the largest wartime internet blackouts ever recorded.

The blackout was imposed after US and Israeli missile strikes hit Iran - leaving ordinary people cut off from the outside world while only government officials, military networks and a handful of elite connections retain limited access.

For millions of Iranians the shutdown means no WhatsApp, no social media and no way to contact family abroad.

Across Europe, desperate relatives are refreshing their phones and waiting for messages that may never come.

Among them is Amir, a 24-year-old Iranian exile living in Europe, who says he is gripped by terror for his family after losing all contact with them for three days amid bombing, blackouts and the nationwide internet shutdown.

Amir said many Iranians living abroad had initially celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening wave of US and Israeli air strikes on Iran last month.

But the celebrations quickly turned to fear as the scale of the war - and the communications blackout - became clear.

Now Amir says he fears the worst after hearing reports that Islamic offices close to where his parents live may have been targeted.

The young worker, who fled Iran just days before his 18th birthday to escape forced military service, said:

“I have still heard nothing from my parents for five days.”

Even the workarounds Iranians usually rely on to bypass censorship - such as VPNs and proxy networks - have been rendered useless during the total shutdown.

“The Internet has been knocked out and previously we had (satellite broadband) Starlink from Elon Musk and that was working and we got a signal and that is now no longer working. We have not been able to use WhatsApp Facebook and the (private internet access) VPN is not working.”

Experts say the regime has spent years building a state-controlled intranet known as the National Information Network, allowing the authorities to keep parts of the economy running while cutting citizens off from the global internet.

The system means that while daily life inside Iran continues on government-controlled platforms, millions of ordinary people are unable to contact loved ones abroad or share information with the outside world.

For Amir, the silence has been agonising.

He said life for his parents has become increasingly terrifying as the bombing intensifies.

“Two days ago they hit the oil and petrol storage companies and from night till day it was just darkness covering the city in smog,” he said.

“The oil and petrol was burning for days and there were always clouds and it was so dark people couldn’t go to work.”

Yet amid the chaos, Amir says many Iranians are quietly rebelling against the regime.

“People are also refusing to go to work for the government and they hope that this will cause chaos and that the country will become bankrupt,” he said.

“They’re not going to work and they have been going to protest every night with masks so they don’t get recognised.”

“Even in the protests against the Ayatollah. They were just normal people, they had done nothing. Nothing wrong, reports show the regime just killed tens of thousands of people,” he said.

“A lot of my friends were involved and one day I woke up and I was told one of my closest friends was killed last night for protesting. It is estimated many were just young people aged 25 or under and they just wanted to be free.”

He added: “Some of my friends who got captured in the protest also got tortured. They broke their arms, punched them in the face. One was pulled into a room where they had gathered about 50 people for questioning. If they couldn’t answer they would break their fingers or their arms or punch them. They would be held there for a week and they would do it all again.”

Even doctors who helped protestors on the streets were persecuted.

“One doctor was helping someone who was bleeding to death. There were no ambulances so he carried him to hospital. But the police came and broke the doors off the hospital and said if you help this man we will kill you. And they killed the doctor.”

Amir himself fled Iran seven years ago after concluding he had no future under the regime.

“One reason why I left was to do with the currency in Iran, the cost of living is too high for the wages,” he said.

“If you work for one month, you would get the equivalent of £77 and yet prices are the same as in Europe so everything is unaffordable.”

He says the economic crisis has forced even highly trained professionals into poverty.

“A lot of doctors I know ended up as taxi drivers and one who I knew was a surgeon and he had given up his dreams and study for all his life just to become a taxi driver. They cannot take care of their families on the income.”

Amir believes the vast majority of Iranians do not support the ruling system.

“I believe the majority of people do not want Islamic regime,” he said.

“You have to do everything they say and everything is done under the name of Islam.”

He describes strict rules imposed even on young children.

“Even in a family with a four-year-old daughter, the little girl has to wear a hijab and cannot play with the little boys and has to separately study with the other little girls. No one can speak freely.”

Amir left Iran aged 17 after obtaining a tourist visa to Spain - escaping compulsory military service by only a matter of days.

“I got a tourist Visa from the embassy of Spain in Tehran and I came to Spain and after 5 years I was able to switch my Visa to residency,” he said.

“I didn’t finish my studies but I had to leave because just days later, when I had become 18, I wouldn’t have been able to go. I would’ve been forced into the military.”

He described the mandatory service as “like a prison”.

“You just sleep and then every day you have to go to work. They make you build bases for fighters as well as doing your military duties,” he said.

“It’s like a prison and you are away for two years.”

During that time, soldiers are cut off from loved ones.

“They are not allowed to contact their family, so they cannot even call them and they are not allowed phones,” he said.

“All of my friends have been in the military. I was determined to get out sooner.”

Those who complete service often emerge traumatised, he claims.

“When my friends came out. They were not the same person I knew,” he said.

“I was happy and joking, but something of their soul is gone and they have depression. But if you don’t go to the military you cannot buy a house, you cannot buy a car in your name and you always have a problem. You are not allowed to leave the country because it is deemed you have classified information that you can spread.”

Today Amir works two jobs in Europe - in an office and as a waiter - while trying to build a new life.

“I work two jobs here in an office and as a waiter I have a lot of dreams but none of these could ever come true if I stayed in Iran,” he said.

He has spent seven years working alone, rarely socialising.

“I have been living here for seven years and I have not had time to socialise,” he said.

“I speak French, English, Spanish, Russian, German, Arabic, and Turkish.”

But despite building a new life abroad, his heart remains with the family he left behind.

He had planned to visit them soon - a trip that now feels painfully uncertain.

“I was going to visit my parents before all of this happened and did not,” he said.

“And if something has happened to them, I will be crazy and never forgive myself.”