Info:
OFAC is designating the Iran-based technology company known as “Arvan Cloud,” two senior employees of Arvan Cloud, and an affiliated company based in the United Arab Emirates for their roles in facilitating the Iranian regime’s censorship of the Internet in Iran.
Arvan Cloud is a key partner of Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Ministry in the development of the National Information Network (NIN), a countrywide intranet that is being used to disconnect the Iranian people from the global Internet. Arvan Cloud has a close relationship with Iran’s intelligence services, including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Arvan Cloud executives have extensive ties to senior Iranian government officials. The Iranian government has regularly used Internet restrictions and the throttling of Internet speeds to suppress dissent, surveil and punish Iranians for exercising their freedom of expression and assembly both online and offline, and limit the dissemination to the international community of credible information about egregious human rights violations.
Navyan Abr Arvan Private Limited Company, known as Arvan Cloud, has played a prominent role in the Iranian government’s development of the NIN infrastructure, a censored version of the Internet under the control of Iranian authorities. The government has responded to the protests that began at the end of 2022 following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, as well as previous rounds of protests, with significant Internet disruptions and restrictions, in addition to mobile network shutdowns and curfew-style disturbances. The Iranian regime has sought to move domestic Internet traffic to the NIN in an effort to mitigate the billions of dollars in lost economic activity it incurs when it imposes internet restrictions to suppress dissent. As a web-hosting service and content delivery network, Arvan Cloud has helped lay the groundwork for the NIN’s integrated cloud network infrastructure. In contracts with the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Arvan Cloud has explicitly agreed to provide interception for the government, allowing Iranian authorities to control and censor incoming and outgoing traffic and surveil data on the servers. Arvan Cloud has also blocked websites at the request of Iran’s Committee to Determine Instances of Criminal Content (CDICC), a government entity previously designated by the United States pursuant to E.O. 13628 for its role in monitoring online content and playing a major role in the filtering of websites deemed to be against the regime’s national beliefs and safety.
Arvan Cloud maintains a close relationship to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and senior managers of Arvan Cloud are either current or former affiliates of MOIS. Former MOIS officials have also publicly encouraged the use of Arvan Cloud services.
Arvan Cloud is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13846 for having engaged in censorship or other activities with respect to Iran on or after June 12, 2009, that prohibit, limit, or penalize the exercise of freedom of expression or assembly by citizens of Iran, or that limit access to print or broadcast media, including the facilitation or support of intentional frequency manipulation by the Government of Iran or an entity owned or controlled by the Government of Iran that would jam or restrict an international signal.
Pouya Pirhosseinloo (Pirhosseinloo) and Farhad Fatemi (Fatemi) are the co-founders of Arvan Cloud and serve as the CEO and the tech lead and senior site reliability engineer, respectively.
ArvanCloud Global Technologies L.L.C. is a Dubai-based affiliate of Arvan Cloud that provides cloud services on behalf of Arvan Cloud and provides a bridge for Arvan Cloud’s connection to the global internet. Arvan Cloud senior executives and employees, including Pirhosseinloo and Fatemi, manage, maintain, and act as administrative points of contact for ArvanCloud Global Technologies L.L.C’s domain and IP addresses.
Abr Arvan is an Iranian Content delivery network and cloud service company. As of 2020 it provided free cloud services to 300 Iranian companies.It also provides VOD, radar(network availability), object storage Infrastructure as a service and Platform as a service to its buyers. According to Donya-e-Eqtesad this corporation provides the cloud ecosystem for Iran. It had fifty thousands clients in 2020. based on W3techs abr arvan is now the eighth CDN provider in the world;
In 2018, the second stage of increasing the capital of this company with a valuation of 200 billion Tomans was done by Fanap Holding and the total shares of this holding reached 47%. The Noyan Abr Arvan company has signed a contract with the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology of Iran;
The Iranian authorities censor coverage of every major political event by means of a content distribution network linked to the country’s digital infrastructure. This network allows the Islamic Republic to control the online content to which its citizens have access.
Launched in 2011, the construction of an Iranian national Internet finally began making significant progress from 2017 onwards when Abr Arvan (Arvan Cloud in English), an Iranian online content delivery and cloud service company, got involved.
This company, which has a branch in Düsseldorf, has provided the infrastructure in which Iranians now access online content via the so-called national information network as part of the Shoma project. It is this distribution network that enables censorship.
“This network could allow the filtering of the content that Iranians can access,” said Vincent Berthier, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk. “This company, which is also active in Europe, therefore plays a de facto strategic role in controlling access to information in Iran. It must immediately cease its collaboration with the Iranian government, to which it provides the tools to impose its censorship.”
Abr Arvan was founded with the help of a 400 million tomans (around 90,000 USD) fund provided by FANAP holding (Pasargad Arian Communication and Information Technology Co). In a live Instagram feed on June 15, 2020, Pirhosseinloo, the CEO of Abr Arvan, announced that the company was worth around 200 million tomans based on its revenues;
Abr Arvan has always been a subset of FANAP holding, and one of its main companies. To truly understand Abr Arvan, one should know its sponsors and the key individuals behind it, those that are at the top of the pyramid of a complex network of companies, holdings, and financial groups.
Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, the then Minister of Communication and Information, shared a picture on his Instagram, visiting Arvan Cloud Booth at Tehran International Exhibition on July 19, 2019, high-fiving Pirhosseinloo. Mahmoud Vaezi, the Chief of Staff of Rouhani is present in the mentioned photo as well. Pointing out that Abr Arvan had acquired its first foreign client, Azari Jahromi captioned this photo:
“No loan, no rent, no astronomical budget and no clamor over being national, they developed a crucial infrastructure service, and last night they managed to provide service to more than fifteen thousand Iranian companies and acquire their first international client. Kudos to them!”
Abr Arvan cannot be seen as just another startup, and this is not only because of its connection to Pasargad Financial Group. Mostafa Naghipourfar was the chairman of Abr Arvan from the company’s founding in 2015 until 2018. Besides being the first chairman of Abr Arvan and one of its founders, he is the previous CEO of the FANAP Innovation Center and one of the founders of FANAP holding. He is now the council to the CEO of FANAP holding, and the secretary of the Iranian Association of New Financial Technologies (Fintech). Naghipourfar has been the CEO and chairman of more than 10 companies so far, some of which were subsets of FANAP holding, such as Baran Telecom, Inc.
“Abr Arvan claims that they do not have any role in internet shutdown, because they themselves are internet users. That is true but the point here is that the National Internet is not just traffic, but national messengers, national data centers, national email, and cloud infrastructures, etc. And what they are doing, knowingly or unknowingly, is providing these tools and cooperating in this project”
Nima Fatemi sees deleting data, in addition to filtering, as the most concerning issue regarding building infrastructures while working with the government:
“When they want to filter a website, they can concurrently ask an ISP to delete their data from their website forever. If the data is on foreign servers, they can only filter the website while the data stays untouched and accessible through circumventing tools”.
This privacy and information security expert adds that when the data is on a domestic cloud infrastructure, they can collect users’ information, and the information of people who use that website/data/services.
In the event of another internet shutdown, such as the shutdown in November 2019, the users on the National Internet infrastructure would not notice. When using national messengers, emails, data centers, etc., users can still access the internet and necessary services, albeit restrictively and in something like a parallel universe. At the same time, accessing and controlling users’ private data would be much easier. As a matter of fact, users’ right to a free internet and freedom of choice would become limited.
“When businesses, banks, etc. do not need the international internet whatsoever, when the government decides to shut down the internet, they can shut down the international/foreign internet (like what happened in November 2019) and keep the domestic internet open, since they have separated the domestic and foreign data. In this case, people inside of Iran feel less of a change in their lives. The only change they feel is that they cannot access foreign websites and emails, but they can use domestic websites and apps. As a matter of fact, internet shutdown becomes less perceptible and has fewer financial consequences for the government”.
Person of interests:
Mehdi Bahadori, Pouya Pirhosseinloo, Farhad Fatemi and Alireza Hashemi are the co-founders of Abr Arvan;
The board members are Pouya Pirhosseinloo (“executive captain”, CEO and board member), Keivan JameBozorg (chairman of the board), and Farhad Fatemi (as “technical captain” and vice chairman);
Involved In:
Nuclear Weapon Program
Missile Weapon Program
Also Known As:
Arvan Cloud
(Persian: ابر آروان)
Noyan Abr Arvan Co.
NAVYAN ABR ARVAN PRIVATE LIMITED COMPANY
ABR ARVAN
ARVAN CLOUD
ARVANCLOUD
NOYAN ABR ARVAN CO.
Country:
Iran
Address:
Shahid Dastgerdi (Zafar) 247, Nelson Mandela (Afrigha) Blvd. 1917717552 Tehran, Iran
Monschauer Str. 12 – 40549 Düsseldorf – Germany
No. 247, Shahid Dastgerdi (Zafar) St., Nelson Mandela Boulevard (Africa), Tehran 1917717553, Iran
Phone:
+982191019999
Website:
www.arvancloud.com
Organization Established Date:
2015
National ID No.:
14005500319 (Iran)
Business Registration Number:
489175 (Iran)
Reason for the color:
» Added to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list maintained by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on June 2, 2023 pursuant to Executive Order 13846 for having engaged in censorship or other activities with respect to Iran on or after June 12, 2009, that prohibit, limit, or penalize the exercise of freedom of expression or assembly by citizens of Iran, or that limit access to print or broadcast media, including the facilitation or support of intentional frequency manipulation by the Government of Iran or an entity owned or controlled by the Government of Iran that would jam or restrict an international signal;
» Iran censor protest coverage and is helped by company active in Europes;