DIGITAL LIFE

Tehran warns Iranians: don’t install Elon Musk’s Starlink internet

Iran’s government is threatening citizens with prosecution if they set up Starlink satellite-internet dishes, even as activists smuggle the equipment across the country’s borders to bypass a sweeping wartime blackout.

The Information and Communications Technology Ministry used state outlets over the weekend to declare Starlink terminals “illegal” and to remind Iranians that importing or operating one “will expose offenders to the full force of the law.” The warning follows an eleven-day shutdown that has left much of the country offline since Israeli and American forces began striking Iranian military and nuclear sites on June 13. 

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk confirmed on 14 June that Starlink’s satellites are actively blanketing Iran, replying to an inquiry on X with the three-word assurance: “The beams are on.”

Without a ground terminal, however, that signal is useless. Each terminal is a flat “pizza-box” antenna that must sit in open sky and plug into a household router. Because the devices are banned, volunteers and foreign intelligence services have reportedly ferried kits into Iran’s Kurdish and Baloch border regions, hiding them in truck beds and fuel tanks.

Industry analysts now estimate that about 20,000 clandestine Starlink dishes are operating inside Iran, purchased on the black market at prices topping $2,000 apiece—nearly 20 times the average monthly wage.

The regime’s fear is less about bandwidth than about control. Since Israeli jets and American cruise missiles began hitting targets at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, encrypted videos of fireballs, antiaircraft batteries and jubilant anti-government crowds have poured onto social media—clips that would normally be scrubbed in seconds by Tehran’s cyber-police. With Starlink, those images skip Iran’s filters entirely.

Former US ambassador Richard Grenell publicly urged Musk to provide the service gratis, writing on X: “Can you turn on @Starlink for free in Iran for the next few weeks? My friends inside don’t have regular access to information.” His appeal went viral, piling pressure on the billionaire to absorb the cost, as SpaceX has done in wartime Ukraine. 

Why is the regime worried? 

-Total loss of the narrative: Starlink undercuts Tehran’s decades-old practice of throttling or cutting the internet during crises, from the 2019 fuel protests to the 2022 Mahsa Amini uprising.

- Operational security risks: Live footage now shows precise impact points of Israeli and US strikes, potentially aiding foreign militaries.

- Domestic legitimacy: Viral clips this week featured Iranians cheering explosions that targeted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s security apparatus, a public relations nightmare for the clerical establishment.

Iran has asked the International Telecommunication Union to force SpaceX to deactivate “unauthorized devices” on its territory, but enforcement is virtually impossible without locating each dish. Meanwhile, opposition networks vow to keep smuggling in terminals “until every rooftop in Tehran has a piece of the sky,” as one underground activist put it.

mundophone