Iran is getting serious about data sovereignty, demanding that foreign social media and messaging apps transfer their data to facilities inside the Islamic Republic within one year.

Iran has long been known for trying to assert control over its citizen’s online activities, blocking popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, spying on its citizens, and censoring lots of other content it doesn’t want people to read. As a result, Iranians are among the most avid users of tools like virtual private networks (VPNs), which can help them to circumvent such restrictions.

But now it seems Iran is trying to outmaneuver its netizens. It’s demanding that all foreign social media apps and sites transfer any data associated with Iranian citizens inside its borders within one year. The ruling was announced by Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace last Sunday, and stems from the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s “guidelines ”, Reuters reported.

“Foreign messaging companies active in the country are required to transfer all data and activity linked to Iranian citizens into the country in order to ensure their continued activity,” the Council insisted.

In order to store their data within Iran’s borders, foreign social media firms such as Facebook would need to establish data center facilities within the country itself, or at the very least hire data center capacity from local operators. It’s not immediately clear how achievable this actually is, not least because Iran is still the subject of international sanctions, in spite of last year’s nuclear deal with the U.S. It’s also questionable whether or not most foreign firms would even be inclined to do so. As such, many foreign social media and messenger apps could well become off-limits to Iranians (legally speaking, at least).

The biggest impact could well be felt by the secure messaging app Telegram, which Reuters says is extremely popular among Iranians with around 20 million active users. The app has already attracted the ire of Iran’s authorities, who arrested a number of popular Telegram group administrators in November of last year for distributing what they described as “immoral content”. Reuters says the main concern is that if Telegram submits to the new decree and establishes data centers in Iran, authorities would be able to monitor user’s activity even more closely and clamp down even harder.

The announcement comes just weeks after Iranian authorities arrested eight women for posting images of themselves on Instagram without a headscarf on.

Image credit: Surian Soosay via flickr.com