We do know that demand for information inside Iran is skyrocketing. Iranians are flocking by the millions to use circumvention software like Psiphon and Lantern to hide their identities from Tehran’s cyber authorities and access social media, messaging apps and trustworthy news sites. Silicon Valley tech company Ultrareach Internet Corp., which invented the Ultrasurf circumvention software, reported its servers failed this month as Iranians flooded their systems. More than half of the Iranian population owns a smart phone.

The authorities in Tehran are reluctant to order a wholesale internet shutdown lest it damage Iran’s already-weak domestic economy and anger more Iranians. But they also want to control the flow of news and information into and throughout Iran. Toward that end they’ve blocked Twitter , Facebookand in particular Telegram, a messaging app with more than 40 million Iranian users. Meanwhile, President Hassan Rouhani uses government TV and social media to offer lip service to the right of Iranians to express themselves.

This an opportunity for the Trump Administration to learn from the Reagan Administration, which used the telecommunications tools of the 1980s to spread information behind the Iron Curtain. The tools then were short wave radio, satellite news and fax machines. Today’s dissenters need software to evade the regimes’s internet firewalls.