“Small businesses on their last legs in Iran”

Hamideh Habibi added that this means a huge plunge in sales and also the failure of previous activities aimed at boosting business.

She noted that internet outage and filtering is just like someone has rented a shop in a mall and the mall is suddenly shut down and customers have to buy stuff from behind closed doors.

Habibi said the same rule holds true for all small and home internet businesses.

She added that even medium businesses that use the national intranet have lost 90 percent of their marketing capability.

Ms. Habibi underlined that the internet outage has affected at least 400 thousand small businesses and this figure could even be higher and reach a million.

Meanwhile, internet monitor NetBlocks has said the internet outage is causing 1.5 million dollars in economic losses per hour in Iran.

That figure translates to a thousand billion tomans in losses suffered by online businesses daily.

Iranian Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi has said some measures could be put in place to compensate the businesses including tax incentives.

Iranian authorities blocked foreign messaging apps like Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp after protests erupted following the recent death of 22-year-old girl Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Authorities say protestors use these applications a the venues for organizing the unrest and riots.