A few months ago, I sat in my office at the University of Toronto frantically refreshing my phone for updates on the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel. I watched the news cycle spin with the terrifying pace of modern conflict, paralyzed by the fear of a regional war engulfing the Middle East.
Today, I am still refreshing my phone. But now, I am not met with a barrage of news. I am met with a stagnant, terrifying silence. Since Jan. 8, the Islamic Republic of Iran has imposed a near-total internet blackout to mask a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests. The silence coming from my homeland is not peaceful; it is the digital equivalent of a mass grave.
While I sit in the safety of Toronto, reports trickle out through precarious channels describing a massacre: security forces firing into crowds, raiding hospitals to arrest the wounded, and a death toll that is in the thousands. For those of us in the diaspora, this blackout has mutated our trauma into something sharper and more insidious. We have moved from the acute anxiety of witnessing war to the painful anguish of ambiguous loss.
I recognize a familiar pattern in my despair. Over the years, I have watched colleagues from conflict-affected communities (e.g., Afghans, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Sudanese, Syrians) navigate the agonizing ritual of checking on loved ones. I vividly recall the terror in my Syrian colleague’s eyes when Raqqa fell in 2014, or the hollow look of an Afghan graduate student when Kabul collapsed in 2021. But the current situation in Iran adds a cruel layer to this shared burden: the weaponization of disconnection.
When the internet is severed, the diaspora is not just worried; we are psychologically confused and helpless. We cannot verify if our parents have their essential medication. We cannot know if the silence from a cousin means their internet is down, or if they are gone. This uncertainty breeds a specific form of psychological torture. We are trapped in a state of chronic hypervigilance, waking up at 3 a.m. to check WhatsApp for a single grey checkmark that might turn blue. We are grieving for the living who are unreachable and mourning a homeland that is fading away in real time. It is a grief without closure, compounded by survivor’s guilt. We feel guilty for our safety, guilty for our electricity, guilty for the high-speed internet that allows us to read about the slaughter of our own people while we cannot even send a message of support.
Inside Iran, the blackout is lethal.
As public health researchers, we often write about the social determinants of health. We analyze housing, income and food security. But in 2026, we must recognize that connectivity is a fundamental determinant of health, and its deprivation is an assault on well-being.
Inside Iran, the blackout is lethal. It has paralyzed emergency services, prevented blood donation coordination, and allowed security forces to turn hospitals into traps where the wounded are arrested rather than treated. Outside Iran, the blackout creates a secondary public health crisis among the diaspora. The mental health toll is not merely “stress.” It is a complex trauma characterized by vicarious traumatization and profound isolation.
Yet, our health-care systems in the West are largely ill-equipped to handle this. We lack culturally competent care that understands the unique pathology of “digital siege.” When a patient presents with anxiety because they haven’t heard from their family in Iran for more than a week, the standard clinical toolkit for anxiety feels woefully inadequate.
There is a bitter irony in writing this from a university office in Canada. We speak constantly of equity, human rights and global health. Yet, the international response to the digital strangulation of 90 million people has been sluggish. We need to shift our perspective. Internet access in conflict zones is not a luxury commodity; it is a lifeline. Blocking it is not a sovereign right; it is a human rights violation that enables atrocities.
For the diaspora, this is not a debate about policy reform; it’s about survival. We need our governments and institutions to do more than issue vague statements of concern. We need active solidarity. This means funding secure communication technologies for those inside non-democratic settings, creating emergency support mechanisms for diaspora scholars and students here, and recognizing that the mental health crisis of the diaspora is a direct result of geopolitical negligence.
I put my phone down, but the reflex remains. I pick it up again. Still nothing. The silence is deafening, and it is breaking us.
