A tipster has informed us that The Iranian is currently blocked by Congressional servers and as such, the site can not be accessed by anyone using Congress’ WiFi.
We reached out to Reza Marashi, a 15-year veteran who has worked for the U.S. government and Washington DC think tanks, for his thoughts as to why our site has been blocked by Congressional servers:
“While it’s hard to say for sure why this is happening, it’s almost certainly one of two things: 1) Over-enforcement of U.S. sanctions on Iran leading to anything online with the words like “Iran,” “Iranian,” “Persian,” et al. getting blocked as part of company policy. We’ve seen this with Venmo, PayPal, and various major banking institutions, among other online services; 2) Overzealous IT department employees who work for Congress and cast way too wide of a net for their intranet filters. This sometimes happened on my State Department computer when I’d try to visit websites that clearly had no negative or inappropriate connotations.”
Intentional or not, the larger US trend of Iranophobia is unquestionable. Whether it’s discrimination in the form of a travel ban, frozen bank accounts, inhumane sanctions, or anti-Iranian, pro-war narratives coming from the media, think tanks and politicians, Iranians in Iran, the United States, and around the world are caught in the crossfire. To that end, we’re undeterred in our push for more balanced reporting and anti-sanctions, anti-war stance.
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