The Iranian government shut off nearly all internet connections early last January-a shutdown being the latest in a series of blackouts aimed at controlling unrest-but this time, the shutdown came with a new twist: a sustained and technically sophisticated effort to disrupt Starlink, the satellite internet service that had become a digital lifeline for many Iranians.
Activists in Iran have been working their way around state censorship using the SpaceX low-Earth orbit network Starlink since 2022. After US regulators green-lit their use, thousands of terminals were smuggled into Iran. It has become vital for activists and journalists among ordinary people who share images and accounts of protests with the outside world. Since late January, Iranian authorities have introduced what experts describe as military-grade jamming equipment degrading the performance of Starlink by jamming GPS signals and uplink transmissions needed for terminals to connect with the network.
“They’re jamming any videos, any content, any reports coming out of Iran,” said Ahmad Ahmadian of Holistic Resilience, a US-based non-profit that supports secure communications. Unlike earlier shutdowns that had relied mainly on cutting terrestrial networks, the campaign has focused on making Starlink unstable, slow and unreliable-a tactic that can be as effective as a full block.
The scale of the outage is unprecedented. Though the Internet Society has recorded 17 shutdowns in Iran since 2018, digital rights advocates say this one is the most geographically far-reaching and long-lasting. According to Cloudflare, there was a collapse of more than 98% in non-satellite traffic within 30 minutes of the cutoff. What few connections remain have been highly dependent on Starlink, which has made the service a target for interference.
Partly because, despite appearances, the service is functional around the borders. NasNet-an activist group that’s been helping Iranians access the network-said SpaceX recently pushed software updates to try and defeat the jamming and quietly expanded free access from one hour to 24 hours for new users in Iran. Though the move is not publicly confirmed by the company, several in-country and international groups have verified that subscription fees for those with hardware in place are currently waived. It has turned into a seriously grave game of “cat and mouse” between the Starlink engineers and the Iranian censors.
NasNet goes into two major methods of interference: GPS jamming and spoofing, which are partially defensible by the internal positioning system of Starlink, and more aggressive attacks on the radio-frequency uplink, tougher to defend against. While the design of the system-with terminals in constant switching between satellites-offers some resilience, it exposes it to more angles of attack. The standoff also underlines the increasingly important role being played by privately-owned satellite networks in geopolitics. With more than 9,000 satellites in orbit, Starlink has the capability to connect people in areas where governments have cut off conventional internet. It has been used in everything from Ukraine’s war to natural disasters in the Americas. Yet, as the case of Iran shows, the technology is not immune to determined state-level interference. Then there are diplomatic and regulatory tensions.
The Iranian government has long protested the presence of Starlink, filing complaints with the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. The ITU has sided with Tehran in principle and declared the service unauthorized, but it lacks enforcement power. Norway, as the notifying administration for Starlink’s filings, and the United States, as an associated administration, have faced repeated calls from the ITU’s Radio Regulations Board to disable terminals operating in Iran-something neither has done on a broad scale. For now, the future of the service in Iran rests on two fronts: the technical battle to keep the signals up and the political calculations of the actors. The outcome is bound to shape not just how Iranians communicate under blackout conditions but even how satellite Internet is perceived as a tool for resilience against state censorship worldwide.
