p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #0463c1; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #0463c1} Iran responded to the groundswell of protests that emerged in the new year by clamping down on popular social media and messaging apps used by Iranian demonstrators to organize. But the United States has also complicated protesters’ efforts with sanctions that have hindered protesters’ ability to communicate and mobilize online.

Now a coalition of advocacy groups that support better ties with Tehran have forged an unlikely alliance with Iran hawks in Congress to try to rectify the chilling effect that US sanctions have had on US technology firms. Together, they are urging the Donald Trump administration to provide greater flexibility for US companies to provide social media and digital platforms to Iranian citizens.

Activists were notably successful in persuading Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman and top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and enthusiastic proponents of the Iran sanctions regime, to include language to that effect in legislation denouncing Tehran’s crackdown against the protesters. The nonbinding resolution, which passed the House 415-2 Tuesday, now “encourages the administration to expedite the license of communications technology to Iran to improve the ability of the Iranian people to speak freely,” and “calls on companies to reject requests by the regime to cut off the Iranian people from social media and other communications platforms.”

The Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans in a press statement claimed credit for successfully lobbying lawmakers for including the technology exemption language. A House aide confirmed that account.