Ordinary Iranians face up to 10 years in prison or even execution if they use X to write anything the government deems critical.
But little did they know that government officials and regime supporters have been using the social media site, which is banned inside Iran, Britain’s The Telegraph reported.
This practice has been revealed after Elon Musk’s X rolled out an update that displays each user’s location.
It has exposed government ministers, state media figures, political officials and pro-regime accounts as having accessed the banned platform from within Iran using special white SIM cards.
The new X location feature was designed to spot fake accounts but instead has lifted the curtain on the divide in Iran, one of the world’s most censored countries, according to the newspaper.
Critics of the regime have termed the online divide a form of “digital apartheid”, with only certain groups able to access the internet freely.
Ordinary Iranians are forced to use VPNs, which conceal their true location, to get around the ban. If they are caught posting on X they are reprimanded by Iranian authorities, and if those posts are anti-Iran or pro-Israel, they face execution or prison sentences.
Meanwhile, state and pro-regime accounts use the white SIM cards in their phones to receive unrestricted access to the internet and bypass their own restrictions.
Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, an Iranian politician who serves on the national security commission, criticized their use.
Ardestani said: “Many people want filtering to exist because they want to sell VPNs and do business.”
He added that the VPN market, used by ordinary Iranians, has high financial turnover and is controlled by “a mafia”.
If users access X through VPNs, the location shows the country where their server is located rather than their actual location.
Other banned platforms in Iran include Facebook, YouTube and Telegram.
“This is obvious discrimination in public rights and against the explicit text of the constitution,” one Iranian citizen told The Telegraph, referring to Iran’s constitutional guarantee of equality among citizens.
“When you yourself use white SIM cards, how can we expect you to understand the pain of filtering? How can we expect you to fight to remove it?” another Iranian said.
Among those whose locations were displayed were communications minister Sattar Hashemi, former foreign minister Javad Zarif, government spokesman Fatemeh Mohajerani and dozens of journalists working for state-aligned media outlets.
Also exposed were political figures, eulogists who praise the Iranian regime at official events, and accounts that had claimed online to be opposition voices, including some monarchist and separatist pages operating from inside Iran with apparent government approval.
Analysts say it is meant to keep parts of the opposition narrative under the control of the clerical establishment.
The exposure proved particularly embarrassing for officials who had publicly opposed privileged internet access.
Mohajerani had claimed she used VPN software like ordinary citizens, saying: “Class-based internet has neither legal basis nor will it ever be on the government’s agenda.”
Mahdi Tabatabaei, communications deputy, said: “Making society white and black is playing on the enemy’s field.”
He added that from President Masoud Pezeshkian’s view, “all 90 million Iranians are white”.
Journalist Yashar Soltani compared the situation to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. He said: “When freedom is rationed it’s no longer freedom – it’s structural discrimination.”
