Iran is in the process of further isolating its inhabitants by replacing the evil Western Internet that assaults delicate Iranian sensibilities with so much nasty free information, with an intranet (a closed network) complete with its own search engine call “Oh Lord”. Have to keep those Mohammed cartoons at bay somehow.

Hadi Malek-Parast, Director General for Research and Development at the Iranian Information Technology Company, told the Iranian Mehr News Agency on Sunday that Iran has started developing a national search enginged dubbed ‘Ya Haq’, a Persian expression meaning “Oh Lord.”

Speaking of the need for faster search capacity and higher security for the country’s online communications, Malek-Parast said Ya Haq would be ready to launch in 2012 and referred to the project as a domestic Intranet, as opposed to an international Internet.

“They are not just developing a search engine, they want to develop an Intranet, instead of an Internet, which would be some kind of local Internet and only give access to state institutions and internally approved sites,” Pujan Ziaie, a senior IT strategist in Iran’s ‘green’ opposition movement told The Media Line. “The discussion began a few years ago and is based on a feeling that the Internet is a Western weapon. They are threatened by it but they cannot ignore it so they are trying to imitate what China has done.”