Iranian authorities have arrested dozens of individuals suspected of selling Starlink satellite terminals following the U.S. and Israeli military strikes that decapitated senior Iranian leaders and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. Iran has prioritized controlling public access to information in the aftermath of these attacks.
After more than a month of ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel, Iran continues to intensify its control over information flow.
In January, during a brutal crackdown on domestic protesters by the Iranian government, thousands of people were reported dead. Protesters utilized Starlink terminals owned by the U.S. company SpaceX to transmit information. Since the outbreak of the war at the end of February, Starlink terminals have also helped Iranian civilians disseminate images of U.S. and Israeli military airstrikes to the world.
According to the semi-official Iranian Student News Agency, Iran’s police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan announced the seizure of 139 Starlink devices and the arrest of 46 individuals involved in selling these satellite terminals. Human rights activists and digital rights organizations estimate that there are around 50,000 Starlink terminals within Iran.
The semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported that on the 25th, Iran’s intelligence agency claimed to have arrested dozens of individuals suspected of passing information to the United States and Israel, seizing 7 sets of Starlink devices along with firearms and ammunition.
The internet monitoring organization NetBlocks stated that since the outbreak of the war, Iran’s domestic internet has been almost completely shut down for over a month, affecting personal communications and e-commerce activities. Iranians are finding ways to bypass internet restrictions, including using Starlink terminals, while Iranian authorities are cracking down on such activities.
Iranian human rights activists suggest that authorities may even impose the death penalty on those using Starlink terminals.
Ahmad Ahmadian, Executive Director of the non-profit digital rights organization Holistic Resilience, told Bloomberg that based on approximately 750GB of leaked internal documents from Iran by a hacker group called “Void Verge,” the Iranian Minister of Information and Communication Technology recently signed a document ordering more actions to search for Starlink devices.
Bloomberg has been unable to independently verify the content of the leaked documents.
Ahmadian pointed out that Iran’s crackdown on Starlink terminals has not yielded the expected results as they struggle to identify the locations of all Starlink devices nationwide.
As the war persists, the approved Iranian national communication network has been paralyzed, rendering most local data centers and many internal “White Sim cards” distributed to officials unusable.
Currently, Iran continues to control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and launch missiles and drones towards the infrastructure of Israel, the United States, and U.S. allies in the Middle East.