They know leaving the internet online would be beneficial for their adversaries, perhaps especially as Israel is one of them, and Israel's use of cyber is no secret.
So by killing the internet, they have an instant air-gap firewall.
Making the most of the levers they have fighting asymmetric warfare.
I mean, sure. But then being at war is also economically harmful. :)
I am not seeking to frame anything here. Nor am I interested in getting involved in the broader areas on discussion on the subject.
The first few words of my original post made it clear "Looking at it from an alternative angle". An alternative way of wording that would be "devil's advocate".
I am just supplying a perfectly reasonable alternative perspective, I am not asking anyone to agree or disagree with it, I am just making a "food for thought" statement.
I see it, and hadn't fully considered it. Turning off the Internet has more utility than just suppressing the populaces ability to communicate, it also blackholes that compromised mail server used to track the movement of political leaders, any online drop-boxes/Telegram/Whatsapp channels used by cultivated informants/spies are now out of order.
We know from the Ukraine side that "keeping the internet on" requires a whole bunch of personal sacrifice, and a lot of "reasonably recent" electronic equipment and infrastructure that Iran can't simply buy or repair right now.
Perhaps you are underestimating the resources available to a country of 90 million. You could play a game where you estimate the number of routers and switches outside of Tehran under a hypothetical where the the capital was leveled. I don't know how many universities Iran has, but my working assumption is that any one Computer Science department from a D-Tier university is equal to the task, if the physical carrier medium for the Internet is still present and they are bringing their ancient half-rack of equipment.
Their country is very much on the edge of chaos which is why they are brutally controlling their citizens.
Especially being at war with practically all the countries around you.
Sure, but why make their life easier ?
Taking your line of argument, you would also need to say "well, the US are going to bomb us anyway. We might as well just post all the GPS coordinates of sensitive sites up on Twitter".
It doesn't matter what your constitution says, western countries have readily adopted brutal censorship during serious wars virtually every time.
Failing to do so simply allows hostile foreign powers free reign in the information space domestically and increases the chance you lose