I've lived in Iran for more than 30 years, and I have enough technical knowledge on IT security to say this, the only way that really works right now for people of Iran to use Internet in a reasonable and practical manner is using VPN. Any other means is not working or is impractical for most users (most web based proxy services are either work for special websites or are actually spying on people or ...). And VPN is not cheap and not accessible for most Iranians (they don't have credit cards to buy the service, because of US sanctions). And whenever government feels a bit unsafe most VPN traffic is also blocked one way or the other for several days.