Under Iran’s internet blackout, SpaceX’s Starlink is a lifeline — if it can stay online

As Iran’s crackdown on communication continues, a game of cat and mouse has ensued, with Iran’s government deploying new ways to halt or slow down Starlink connections, and activists and Starlink’s parent company, Elon Musk’s Space X, working to circumvent them.

People opposed to the regime have been protesting in the streets across Iran for the last three weeks. The country’s leadership cut off internet and phone access last week as protests and unrest gripped many parts of the country. It’s a tactic that the Human Rights Watch says has helped the regime “conceal widespread atrocities.”

According to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 2,500 people have been killed in the mass protests across the country. (The agency relies on supporters inside Iran for information it then compiles and releases to the public. Iranian authorities have not provided an official death toll.)

Iran has also lobbied the United Nations’ arm devoted to regulating communications technology, the International Telecommunication Union, to force SpaceX to stop operating in Iran. So far, the U.N. has not done so.

The near-total ban on outside communication has left Starlink, widely regarded as the most cost-effective and high-speed commercially available option for satellite internet access, as the only choice for many Iranians.

In a video that was circulated on social media, body bags are seen lined up at the Tehran Province Forensic Medicine Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in the city of Kahrizak. At one point, the man filming tells the person he is talking to on the phone, “If you get a hold of a Starlink anywhere in Iran, let me know.”

But its usage does not come without its own risks.

“We know, according to the law, using Starlink is a big crime,” said Amir Rashidi, a refugee from Iran and the director of the Miaan Group, a nonprofit digital rights group focused on the Middle East. “Still, I don’t know if this might be another level of censorship.”

In addition to the ongoing total ban on international internet traffic, the government also initially blocked international phone calls and access to local networks that had stayed operational during previous blackouts, said Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, a company that tracks internet connectivity.

“This is one of the most severe internet shutdowns we’ve ever seen. Total internet shutdown, international calling blockage, sporadic domestic connectivity disconnections, for a country of 92 million people,” Madory said.

Since then, Starlink has become a hot commodity. While there is no official count of terminals in Iran, reliable estimates are in the tens of thousands, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a nonprofit that works to get Iranians online.

Ahmadian said the Iranian government has been deploying “jamming” devices — a misnomer, as they do not fully disrupt Starlink terminals, but instead interfere with their traffic and can slow it down. That has somewhat been mitigated when Starlink forced an update to their terminals earlier this week, he said.

“Satellite internet during this total blackout has proven to be the only way that people were able to get the information out,” he said.

But that may change soon, Rashidi said, as Iran’s government is actively working to improve its ability to invasively capture internet traffic as it travels to and from the satellites and identify the people using the devices.

Starlink is fairly simple to use: A person just needs a small device called a terminal, which can connect to fleets of low-orbit satellites constantly circling the earth and provide a Wi-Fi signal to people nearby.

But until this week, many terminals hadn’t worked for many Iranians, Ahmadian said, as they usually require a paid subscription that often doesn’t accept money from Iranian banks and credit cards. That changed when SpaceX suddenly waived the subscription fee for people in Iran, he said.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Musk, who regularly posts on X about Starlink, has not posted about it in relation to Iran, but earlier in the month boosted the company’s post about providing free service to people in Venezuela through Feb. 3.