Elon Musk’s Starlink challenges Iran’s blackout in a new tech power struggle. Photo / Getty Images
With two words, Elon Musk changed the classic methods of revolution forever.
“Activate Starlink”, he said in a social media post about Iran in 2022, suddenly giving the Islamic Republic’s 90 million citizens the possibility of accessing the internet in a way that no regime could jam or censor.
It was an extraordinary challenge to a system of control painstakingly built by Iran’s leadership and enforced for decades by a ruthless security state.
The regime has routinely sought to hide its blood-soaked repression of protests – and stop opponents from communicating or organising – by disrupting the internet.
During the current unrest, the authorities have taken the draconian step of disconnecting the entire country from the internet for the first time since 2019.
A national blackout has been imposed since last Friday NZT to dramatic effect, even disrupting phone networks and landline telephones, forcing Iran back into a pre-19th century era of communication and inflicting colossal economic damage.
High above, Musk’s constellation of SpaceX satellites was supposed to give any Iranian with a Starlink terminal – a satellite dish about the size of a laptop computer – a way of bypassing all restrictions and connecting to the internet.
Up to 50,000 of these terminals are believed to be active inside Iran, defying an official ban, having been smuggled into the country since 2022, when Musk first activated the satellite network overhead.
Yet, this time, Musk’s system seems to have been outmanoeuvred as the state adjusts its tactics in an ever more sophisticated game of technological cat and mouse.
The regime’s experts have so far deployed two highly effective countermeasures. They cannot jam Starlink internet connections, but they can slow them down so drastically as to make them virtually unusable.
Each Starlink terminal uses the global positioning system (GPS) to find the right location for a satellite connection. The security forces are now jamming GPS signals, focusing on the areas of Iran where protests are taking place.
The “military-grade” equipment needed for this purpose was “likely supplied by Russia or China,” says Mahsa Alimardani, an associate director of Witness, an organisation that uses audiovisual technology to document human rights violations.
Both Russia and China have done their best to work out how to blind or disrupt the GPS network, which was invented and installed by America, originally for military purposes.
Russia has pursued this task with particular urgency since Ukraine relies on Starlink for battlefield internet connectivity.
Iran’s rulers may now be benefitting from the expertise gained by the two other authoritarian states with whom they have close, if wary, relations.
The regime’s second counter-measure is to disrupt the connection between Starlink terminals and Musk’s satellites. That outcome can be achieved by direct interference with the required frequencies.
Taken together, these techniques have succeeded in slowing down Starlink connections inside Iran by anything from 30% to over 80% during peak protest hours. Never before has Musk’s network been disrupted so successfully.
As the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia strive to suppress the demonstrations, technology is just as important as batons, bullets and tear gas.
During previous outbreaks of unrest – most notably during the mass rallies against the rigged presidential election of 2009 – the regime was taken by surprise by its youthful, networked and tech-savvy opponents.
Judging by their counter-measures against Starlink, Iran’s rulers may be closing this knowledge gap and, at least for now, pulling ahead in the technological arms race.
There is a way for Musk to foil the regime’s campaign against Starlink terminals in Iran – but not yet.
Every smartphone in the world made since 2022 has the technology to connect directly to Musk’s satellites, without any need for a terminal, and to use the billionaire’s constellation as a vast and invisible phone tower in the heavens.
The regime might be able to make 50,000 terminals unusable, but it would not be able to achieve this outcome with tens of millions of smartphones in the hands of ordinary Iranians.
At present, however, there is not enough satellite capacity to provide full internet access via these “direct to cell” – or “D2C” – connections for 90 million Iranians. What’s more, D2C services are currently offered by local operators, not directly by Musk’s company, SpaceX.
So it’s not just that more satellites would need to be launched – a new commercial model would need to be devised to allow Iranians to connect to the internet using a Starlink satellite.
As Alimardani explains: “D2C satellite connectivity could reach millions of Iranians with the phones they already own. What’s missing is the policy framework, commercial model and political will to deploy it.”
That day will doubtless arrive, allowing protesters to regain their technological lead, though it could take one or two years to provide full D2C internet coverage for Iran if prioritised.
A more basic service, allowing text connectivity, could be made operational more quickly.
The only question is whether it will come too late to change the course of events in Iran’s current turmoil.
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