More than 100 days have passed since the beginning of the widespread internet shutdown in Iran. During this period, the government claimed that by forming the Special Task Force for Cyberspace Governance, it intended to end the country’s deteriorating internet conditions. Although, following the Task Force’s fourth-session resolution, a limited portion of connectivity has returned in a controlled and selective form, technical evidence shows that the Islamic Republic does not intend to retreat from its multilayered architecture of censorship, surveillance and communications control. Even so, after holding four sessions, the Task Force’s activities were halted by the Court of Administrative Justice on the grounds of alleged parallel work and institutional overlap with bodies controlled by the leadership of the Islamic Republic.

The Court of Administrative Justice announced that, following complaints seeking the annulment of the “Document Establishing the Special Task Force for Cyberspace Governance,” approved on May 12, 2026, the Court’s Specialized Panel for Industry and Commerce, citing urgency and necessity, issued an interim order suspending implementation of the document until final review. The same notice stated that, pending final adjudication, “the resolutions and decisions of the Special Task Force for Cyberspace Governance shall have no legal effect.”

Who was removed from the decision-making table?

The Special Task Force for Cyberspace Governance appears, on the surface, to be a response to the internet crisis and the deadlock over lifting filters. But its membership shows that the issue is not simply whether the internet is connected or disconnected. The document establishing the Special Task Force shows that Pezeshkian’s government created a body that includes almost all the security, judicial and executive actors involved in internet governance.

The composition of the Task Force shows that, contrary to its initial appearance, this is not a project to remove security institutions from internet governance. Under the founding document, the Task Force is chaired by the first vice president, while the minister of ICT serves as its secretary and deputy chair. Alongside them sit the ministers of Islamic Guidance, Science, Intelligence and Defense, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the president’s vice president for science and technology, the head of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace (SCC), the prosecutor general, one member of parliament and up to three experts in internet policy, digital economy and technology governance. The main shift, therefore, is not the retreat of security or judicial bodies. The Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the Ministry of Defense, the prosecutor’s office and the SNSC remain at the decision-making table. The more important difference lies elsewhere: the security actors have stayed, but the individual members of the SCC, directly appointed by the previous leadership, have been removed from the Task Force’s formal composition.

The complaint by four individual members: a reaction from those excluded

The SCC was established from the outset by Ali Khamenei’s direct order and was meant to serve as the central point for policymaking, decision-making and coordination in the internet sphere. Alongside the president, the speaker of parliament, the head of the judiciary, the IRGC commander, the head of state broadcasting, ministers and the council’s secretary, there was also a layer of individual members appointed directly by the leader of the time. In practice, these figures were not merely technical experts or academics. They carried the leadership’s political, ideological and security interpretation of the internet into the decision-making structure, what the Islamic Republic’s official language refers to as the “supreme leader’s directives.” But this circle is absent from the new Task Force. Almost all major legal and security institutions are present, but the individual members of the SCC have no place in the Task Force’s formal composition.

The significance of the complaint filed by four individual members of the SCC with the Court of Administrative Justice lies precisely here. Reza Taghipour, Rasoul Jalili, Mohammad Hassan Entezari and Kamyar Saghafi were among the complainants seeking to halt implementation of the document establishing the Special Task Force. All four belong to the layer of the SCC’s individual members, and their position derives not from an executive post in the government but from direct appointment by the previous leader. They were not objecting to an administrative decision from the outside. They were reacting from a position that, under the previous structure, formed part of the center of gravity for internet decision-making, but no longer has a seat in the new Task Force. This complaint, therefore, is not merely a legal dispute over a “parallel institution.” It can also be read as a political and institutional reaction by a layer that sees part of its power removed from the new decision-making table.

A failed attempt to shift the center of power?

The phrase “de-Khameneization of the internet” may sound sharp, but from the perspective of institutional composition, it is not an unreasonable question. If the SCC was a mechanism for institutionalizing the previous leader’s will in digital governance, the Special Task Force can be read as an attempt to move the internet file out of the domain of his personally appointed individual members and into the domain of the government, the SNSC and legal officeholders. This does not mean the removal of security institutions. On the contrary, the Task Force kept the same security and executive actors in place, while excluding the layer whose legitimacy and influence came directly from Ali Khamenei’s appointment orders.

This document alone does not prove that the new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei’s network, or any other center of power has been weakened. In practice, the Court of Administrative Justice has, for now, rendered the Task Force ineffective. But the document does show that an attempt was made to move one of the Islamic Republic’s most important fields of security governance, the internet, out of the classic path of the SCC and into a Task Force in which the individual members appointed by the previous leader have no seat. In a system where power is often hidden in the composition of councils, this is not a minor shift.

The Special Task Force may have been created to address the internet crisis, but its institutional effect goes beyond connectivity and filtering. It shows that the government wants to move the internet file away from a heavy, ideological council carrying the will of the previous leader, and toward an executive and security mechanism that, according to some claims, sits under the SNSC and is easier to manage. This does not mean that Pezeshkian’s government is defending a free internet. The real question lies elsewhere: at the new decision-making table, who still has a seat, and who no longer does?