Iranian authorities block websites and other content on the web to enforce the law and to suppress dissent. While Iran officially does not practice sharia law, multiple aspects of sharia law are observed in the legal system. Speech that is considered to be blasphemous, vulgar, or pornographic are censored from the web. Art, politics, and news websites were also heavily censored. Most western social media sites are blocked.

Both Iranian internet service providers and government authorities are responsible for maintaining the content filtering mechanisms that scrub, throttle, and block Iran’s internet.