Inside Iran’s Starlink war

Iran has become the stage for a profound shift in the nature of conflict between authoritarian states and borderless technology. The past few weeks have turned the country into a complex testing ground for the resilience of satellite internet networks in the face of advanced digital repression. The Iranian authorities’ assault on communications infrastructure, launched alongside a new wave of protests, was not a routine security response. It amounted to a declaration of a new phase of electronic warfare -from the ground all the way into orbit- aimed at severing the last remaining communications lifeline for the opposition: Starlink.

On January 8, 2026, the Iranian regime imposed a nationwide internet blackout. After blocking websites and throttling speeds, the authorities escalated to what officials termed “total darkness”, shutting down fibre-optic networks, mobile data services, and even state-approved fixed landlines.

Real-time network monitoring data from Cloudflare Radar showed Iran’s internet traffic collapsing almost to zero within hours. The highly coordinated nature of the shutdown across multiple providers pointed to a centralised “kill switch” controlled by the security establishment—specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Iran’s international internet gateways. The surprise, however, was the simultaneous failure of Starlink satellite terminals. This information siege created what activists describe as a “zone of impunity”, allowing security forces to suppress protests far from global scrutiny. With Starlink offline, the final channel for digital documentation fell silent.

The blackout was not achieved solely by the IRGC. It was the product of cooperation with Russian and Chinese firms. Iran’s internet infrastructure relies on traffic-control systems developed by Russian companies such as Protei, which have helped Iranian operators integrate message-interception technologies. These systems enable authorities to block websites, fingerprint encrypted VPN traffic, identify protest coordination hubs, and disable them. At the same time, Tehran is in the final stages of deploying a new national network built on Chinese Huawei platforms, designed to allow Iran to disconnect entirely from the global internet for extended periods while keeping regime-loyal domestic services running.

“Digital apartheid”

In an attempt to limit the economic damage of blanket shutdowns, the Iranian regime adopted in 2025 what critics call a discriminatory model of internet access. Selected, state-approved groups are allowed unrestricted access to the global internet, while the wider population is denied it. Those on the “whitelist” include political elites, state media, loyal academics, and banks deemed essential for economic continuity.

Under these conditions, Starlink terminals became the only tool capable of documenting abuses and transmitting images and video abroad. Harder to control than traditional cable-based networks, the service posed a new challenge, placing it in direct confrontation with authorities armed with advanced jamming equipment. In response, the company waived subscription fees for users inside Iran, enabling thousands of smuggled terminals to connect almost immediately. Videos soon emerged showing hundreds of bodies in forensic centres near Tehran، images that transformed global understanding of the scale of the crackdown.

These transmissions took place even as Tehran passed a law in late 2025 criminalising the possession of unlicensed Starlink equipment. Penalties include up to ten years in prison, and in some cases, the death sentence, under charges of espionage for Israel or the United States.

The battle of frequencies

Iranian authorities did not remain passive in the face of what they regard as a breach of their digital sovereignty. Instead, they launched what has been described as the most advanced electronic warfare campaign yet against low-Earth-orbit satellites. Using a mix of domestic technology and Russian and Chinese military hardware, Iran has targeted Starlink through three main approaches.

The first is Ku-band jamming. Ground-based jammers flood Starlink frequencies with high-power noise, causing severe signal degradation. In Tehran alone, data packet loss has reportedly reached 80%.

The second is GPS spoofing. Starlink terminals rely on satellite navigation signals to determine their location and orient their phased-array antennas. Iranian forces broadcast powerful fake GPS signals that trick terminals into believing they are in entirely different locations -sometimes in the middle of the sea, or even as far away as Canada- causing beam misalignment and loss of connection.

The third involves the deployment of Russian Krasukha and Tirada systems, mobile jamming platforms capable of creating a 300-kilometre “dead zone” for radars and satellites. The Tirada-2S variant, designed specifically to disrupt satellite uplinks, is believed to be in use, targeting the satellites themselves in orbit to interfere with their ability to receive requests from user terminals.

Counter-measures

Iran’s success in silencing satellite-based dissent has pushed SpaceX to respond. Software updates have been rolled out to improve signal resilience, including allowing terminals to operate using approximate or manually entered location data, reducing their vulnerability to GPS spoofing.

The company has also expanded its use of inter-satellite laser links -the so-called “laser mesh”- allowing data to be routed between satellites in space before being downlinked to secure ground stations outside Iran. This makes local, ground-based jamming of gateways far less effective. Other measures are under development as SpaceX seeks to prove it can adapt faster than any single state can suppress.

Investors, the US military, and China

What is unfolding in Iran goes far beyond a local struggle. The US military and intelligence agencies, which rely on the military version of Starlink known as Starshield, are closely monitoring the network’s performance. The Pentagon views Iran as a “live testing environment” for countering Russian and Chinese electronic warfare systems. If Starlink can withstand sustained disruption, confidence in using such networks in future major conflicts -Taiwan being the most obvious example- will grow. China, meanwhile, is watching closely and studying how to improve its emerging satellite constellations, designed to compete with Starlink in the coming years.

At the same time, the Iranian case has punctured what many now see as the illusion of “digital sovereignty”. While Tehran has lodged complaints with international bodies such as the ITU, arguing that Starlink violates its sovereignty, technical reality suggests that physical borders can no longer contain information flows in the age of low-Earth orbit. Digital rights activists argue that “national internet sovereignty” has become a tool of repression and that access to the global internet should be treated as a fundamental right. Yet the situation also places SpaceX in an uneasy position: a single individual -Elon Musk- effectively holds the power to switch the internet on or off in conflict zones.

Phones as a network without the internet

In an era when networks are shut down at the first sign of crisis, and the internet is treated as a political emergency switch, attention has turned to alternatives. One of them is Bitchat, a messaging application that works without an internet connection, cell towers, or servers.

Bitchat operates over Bluetooth, turning each phone into a node in a moving local network. Messages do not travel directly from sender to distant recipient; instead, they hop from one nearby phone to another through a mesh network. Each user acts simultaneously as sender, receiver, and relay.

In theory, Bluetooth range is limited to tens of metres. In practice, with enough users, messages can travel hundreds of metres or more, as long as active phones form a chain. The appeal lies in the absence of phone numbers, accounts, telecom operators, or central servers that can be easily blocked or monitored. It resembles a kind of “primitive internet” built by people themselves.

Yet this strength conceals serious security risks. Messages pass through other users’ devices, and if encryption is not strictly end-to-end, intermediate nodes become potential points of surveillance. Any phone within the network can turn into an invisible observer.

A turning point

Iran’s internet shutdown marks a pivotal chapter in the history of communications. The struggle is no longer confined to street protests; it now encompasses connectivity, frequencies, and orbital control. As regimes invest in isolated networks and advanced jamming systems, technology responds with innovations that make total blackout increasingly difficult over the long term.

The outcome of this Starlink stress test will shape future conflicts. If the network succeeds in keeping Iranians connected to the world despite sustained military-grade interference, it may signal the end of information darkness as an effective political tool. Failure, by contrast, would redraw the map of digital repression, granting authoritarian systems greater control over their populations beyond international scrutiny. For now, Starlink remains the most vital lifeline to the outside world—yet one under constant threat in a war fought not only with bullets, but with nanoseconds, hertz, and lines of code.