Hannah Jaffe-Walt

The deadline was evening in the U.S., 3.30 in the morning in Iran.

One voice memo was short and to the point from Chabat, a carpenter.

He's Kurdish, an ethnic minority in Iran, living in the western part of the country.

One last person, Arta.

He runs a tech company in Asfahan.

Arta's voice memos came in last.

I listened after hearing all of the others.

And it helped me understand something I hadn't before about where things might be headed in Iran.

Arta was deeply unsettled by people around him who were furious that President Trump did not follow through on his threats.

especially a promise Trump made on social media to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

There's another red line Arta has held for a while now.

He tells this story, and this is where I felt like, oh, that is a clue, not just about the blackout and what's happening now, but something the Iranian regime seems to have been building up for years now.

Before the war, over a year ago, Archa was offered something he calls a white line.

It's also called a white SIM card.

White SIM cards are a way for Iranian officials and political leaders and regime-aligned journalists to bypass Internet restrictions and access much more of the global Internet than the general population ever has access to.

So even when there's an Internet blackout or delays, if you have a white SIM card, you can get online.

Arta had a contact who said they could get him a white card, a white line.

But back then, Arta refused.

Then this war and this blackout, the longest ever, and Arta got a new offer, a new service approved by the state called Internet Pro.

This would be like a white line or a white SIM card, but it would cost money and it would give Arta a way to access the global Internet.