That's wishful thinking. I can't say much about the Soviets, but the regime in Iran, or at least a chunk of the people in power, understands how to balance thei

That's wishful thinking. I can't say much about the Soviets, but the regime in Iran, or at least a chunk of the people in power, understands how to balance their power and freedom (critically the "freedom to get rich", despite, and often because of massive corruption) and the perception and hope of freedom in the wider society and they adapt well to new circumstances. They are much more sophisticated than you portray them to be in your comment. If they weren't as good in adapting, they would have been gone many times by now. Source: personal [unfortunate] experience of having been born and lived there for a the first couple decades of my life. P.S. Also note that a lot of (and I'd say the majority of young) even non-technical people know how to circumvent internet censorship and are regularly on Facebook and social media, so it's not exactly a social revolution happening just today. In fact, I see this type of system without direct user choice of the content, just another form of centralized, controlled, media, which is a step down from normal internet over some sort of proxy/VPN (albeit slow). (I don't want to detract from the technical contribution; just putting it in perspective of the existing available techniques in wide use over there.)