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Government uses both blunt and surgical tools to stifle dissidents, hacker says.

"China has several gigabytes per second of traffic to deal with and has a lot more international businesses," he says. "They can't be as heavy-handed with their filtration. The Iranians aren't as concerned about that… so they get to use all these fancy toys that, if the Chinese used them, could cripple their economy."

Endgame still unclear

Sennhauser says that the government has employed these technologies smartly despite being caught flat-footed by the initial furor after the election. Indeed, he thinks the only reason that Iran hasn't yet completely shut down dissidents' communications is that they've had to fight with an army of hackers who tirelessly search for flaws in their system.

"It really is an arms race," he says. "They create a problem, we circumvent it, they create another, we get around that one. This continues on until the need to do so is removed. The circumstances which will end the competition aren't clear yet."