Known for its harsh Internet censorship, which includes banning thousands of websites and state-imposed Internet shutdowns, Iran has been working for years on a project to develop a sanitized, national Internet that would work independently from the World Wide Web.The November 2019 Experience The Supreme Council of Cyberspace of Iran in 2016 launched the National Information Network project, which aims at creating an Internet network that can be cut off from the World Wide Web and be controlled by the Iranian government.A few weeks after the November 2019 protests, “when it became clear that the National Information Network was useless without the internet, [Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei sent a memo to the Ministry of Communication and Technology, ordering it to take responsibility for content and basic services, in addition to the infrastructure, meaning cables, routers and servers.” After that, the government launched the project for providing Internet content, and private companies such as ArvanCloud joined in to supply the necessary services, says Saremifar.It attracted the attention of Germany’s media and government last month after joint research by the non-profit German research center Corrective and two media outlets, Taz and netzpolitik.org, concluded that Softqloud, an IT service insights provider headquartered in Germany, was a branch of ArvanCloud and that it was one of the four digital connection gates that connect Iran to the global Internet.“Based on our termination terms, we shall, within 3 months up to 31.12.2022, migrate all of our services,” it added, insisting that Softqloud was a “commercial partner” that was “responsible for ArvanCloud’s international customers and suppliers.” A BBC Persian report, published in March 2021, reported that two months earlier Iran’s Ministry of Communication announced it had signed a contract with ArvanCloud and another company to work on the Abr Iran project."