Free Starlink access for Iran seen as game changer for demonstrators getting their message out

Iranian protesters have gained a powerful tool in their fight to share information with the outside world as SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has dropped its fees for users in Iran, activists reported Wednesday. This move comes as the Iranian government implemented an unprecedented telecommunications blackout affecting the country’s 85 million citizens on January 8, amid growing protests over the nation’s economic crisis and currency collapse.

While SpaceX has made no official announcement about the decision and did not respond to requests for comment, activists confirmed to The Associated Press that Starlink has been available free of charge to anyone in Iran with receivers since Tuesday.

“Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into the country. He highlighted a particularly impactful video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran. “That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink. I think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone’s understanding of what’s happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”

The death toll from the protests, which began on December 28, has now surpassed 2,500 people, primarily demonstrators but also including security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Starlink remains banned in Iran under telecommunications regulations, as the country has never authorized the importation, sale, or use of these devices. This creates significant risks for users, who could potentially face espionage charges—which carry the death penalty—for using the technology.

The first Starlink units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country’s mandatory headscarf law, after Elon Musk secured an exemption from the Biden administration for Starlink services from Iran sanctions. Since then, activists estimate more than 50,000 units have been brought into the country clandestinely.

Iranians have developed creative methods to conceal their Starlink equipment, including disguising satellite antennas as solar panels. Ahmad Ahmadian, executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that helped smuggle some of the first units into Iran, described the elaborate precautions users take, including employing virtual private networks to hide their IP addresses.

“There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran in 2012 after being imprisoned for student activism. “The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

Following a 12-day war with Israel in June, when communication disruption attempts proved ineffective, Iranian security services have adopted more “extreme tactics” to jam Starlink’s radio signals and GPS systems. In response, SpaceX has issued firmware updates to help users circumvent these new countermeasures.

The Iranian government has also deployed human intelligence, using informers to identify potential Starlink users and monitoring internet traffic for signs of satellite communication. There have been reports of security services raiding apartments suspected of housing satellite dishes. However, Ahmadian noted that the government’s jamming attempts have only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting limited resources for wider blocking efforts.

On Tuesday, Iran began allowing international outbound calls via mobile phones, though inbound calls remain blocked. Compared to the 2019 protests, when the government successfully suppressed information flow for over a week with less severe measures, the widespread availability of Starlink has made complete communication blackouts virtually impossible.

“This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” Ahmadian said. “But despite this, the information was coming out, and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

Musk has previously made Starlink free during several natural disasters. Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, initially funded by SpaceX and later through a U.S. government contract.

Some experts have raised concerns about the concentration of such communication power in the hands of a single individual, particularly after Musk refused to extend Ukraine’s Starlink coverage to support a planned counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea. Ahmadian acknowledged this was a “wake-up call” but believes Musk would have economic interests in supporting “a free Iran as a new market.”

Julia Voo, who leads the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, warned about the risks of relying on one company as a communications lifeline, noting it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are few comparable alternatives.

As Starlink proves effective at circumventing government-imposed communication blackouts, countries like China have been exploring methods to neutralize Starlink satellites. “It’s just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” Voo cautioned.