When a surge of hits from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in Nigeria pop up on the US Embassy Iran website, the US State Department is not puzzled but pleased.

Nigeria has no appreciable Iranian population, so the Obama administration figures that the hits are coming from Iranians seeking to circumvent their government’s efforts to block the site.

There has been no functioning US Embassy in Iran since Nov. 4, 1979, when radical students seized the sprawling compound in downtown Tehran and held American diplomats hostage. But for the past year, Iranians have been able to access an online menu of information and services that partly compensates for the absence of a physical US diplomatic outpost in the Iranian capital.

The virtual embassy was inaugurated on Dec. 6, 2011 — as it happened that year, the culmination of the Shiite holy period of Ashoura, which commemorates the death of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Hossein, in the Iraqi desert in the seventh century. A State Department official, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said there was concern that the launch date would offend devout Iranians but that the timing actually worked out quite well.