Facebook and Twitter unblocked and blocked Again in Iran, officials blame technical glitch

Internet users in Iran lost access Tuesday to Facebook and Twitter, a day after they were surprised to find that they could get on the sites without having to evade a government’s firewall that had blocked direct access to the Web sites for years.

Iranian officials said that a technical glitch resulted in the temporary unblocking of the sites

Facebook and Twitter became widely accessible to Iranian users on Monday for the first time since 2009, when the services were blocked in the midst of widespread protests against former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to reports emerging from the country.

Reporters in Tehran for the New York Times and the Washington Post both said on Twitter that they could access the service freely on Monday.

The country’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has promised several times to reduce Internet censorship, and several of his cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have set up Facebook pages and opened Twitter accounts, some of them quite active.

Insiders say the glitch could have been caused by infighting between groups seeking to reopen the Web sites, who are struggling with hard-liners who continue to control the hardware to block Web sites. By Tuesday, Iranian officials had restored the blocks.

Iranian Internet users reacted to the apparent unblocking on Monday as if a digital Berlin Wall had just crumbled on their computer screens.

“Hurray, I came to Facebook without using VPN,” a user called Bita posted on her wall. “Thank you Rouhani!!!”

Still, the government has sometimes let the firewall blocking Facebook and Twitter slip open briefly by mistake, and some Iranians cautioned that the opening on Monday, too, might be just a glitch.