{"id":516040,"date":"2026-01-14T18:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T18:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/516040\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T18:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T18:03:13","slug":"iranian-demonstrators-gain-boost-with-spacexs-starlink-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/516040\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian demonstrators gain boost with SpaceX’s Starlink service"},"content":{"rendered":"

BANGKOK (AP) \u2014 Iranian demonstrators\u2019 ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests<\/a> out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government\u2019s strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown<\/a> of telecommunications and internet access to Iran\u2019s 85 million people on Jan. 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic Republic\u2019s faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarlink has been crucial,\u201d said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink,\u201d he said in an interview from Los Angeles. \u201cI think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone\u2019s understanding of what\u2019s happening because they saw it with their own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the outbreak of demonstrations Dec. 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.<\/p>\n

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the U.S. or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Cat-and-mouse as authorities hunt for Starlink devices<\/p>\n

The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country\u2019s mandatory headscarf law<\/a>, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.<\/p>\n

Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going to great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.<\/p>\n

Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna that requires a line of sight to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.<\/p>\n

After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more \u201cextreme tactics\u201d now to jam Starlink\u2019s radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed a firmware update that helped circumvent the new countermeasures.<\/p>\n

Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used. There have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has always been a cat-and-mouse game,\u201d said Ahmadian, who fled Iran in 2012 after serving time in prison for student activism. \u201cThe government is using every tool in its toolbox.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.<\/p>\n

A free Starlink could increase the flow of information out of Iran<\/p>\n

Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.<\/p>\n

Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications. He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,\u201d he said. \u201cBut despite this, the information was coming out, and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.<\/p>\n

Musk had raised concerns<\/a> over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine\u2019s Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.<\/a><\/p>\n

As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn\u2019t see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest … in a free Iran as a new market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies\u2019 Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk in becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it \u201ccreates a single point of failure,\u201d though currently there are no comparable alternatives.<\/p>\n

China has been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites<\/a>, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating \u201cgovernment-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BANGKOK (AP) \u2014 Iranian demonstrators\u2019 ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":516041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[9600,230333,64,66,57,712,83,3461,80,402,12041,159,783,2527,158,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-516040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-activism","9":"tag-ahmad-ahmadian","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-internet","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-iran-government","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","18":"tag-recessions-and-depressions","19":"tag-science","20":"tag-space","21":"tag-spacex","22":"tag-technology","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115894773788196463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}