The Iranian government is intensifying its efforts to suppress Starlink terminals, going so far as to go door to door to hunt down Starlink users.
X owner Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals have served as a revolutionary way for people in areas without internet access to connect, provided they possess a simple terminal. It has been so effective that the Ukrainian military relies on it for communications in the war against Russia. The Iranian protesters have come to rely on the devices, but technological advancements in Tehran have allowed authorities to suppress their connection. Reports are now coming out that security forces are going door-to-door in some areas to find and confiscate any Starlink terminals.
Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at the U.S.-based Miaan Group, told the Wall Street Journal that disruptions in Starlink connections were worst in protest hot spots, especially in parts of Tehran.
“It’s electronic warfare,” Rashidi said.
The problems with Starlink are the first time there has been a major blackout in connections with the device, a development that has shocked analysts. It’s believed that Tehran can suppress Starlink with military-grade jammers, likely supplied by Russia, Forbes reported. Reports found that up to 80% of Starlink terminals were down, but the trickle of videos and pictures about the protests coming out of Iran has come from these devices.
“Starlink is pretty much the only way to connect, to send news out of the country,” Mehdi Yahyanejad, co-founder of NetFreedom Pioneers, told the Washington Post of Starlink’s role for protesters in Iran. “It’s been very critical. All these videos and pictures that have come out in the past few days have been sent out through Starlink.”
President Donald Trump has pledged to speak with Musk to increase Starlink access to the protesters, something the Tesla CEO has implied is happening.
“We may get the internet going, if that’s possible,” Trump said on Sunday. “We may speak to Elon because, as you know, he’s very good at that kind of thing; he’s got a very good company. So we may speak to Elon Musk. And in fact, I’m going to call him as soon as I’m finished with you.”
Starlink terminals are illegal to possess in Iran, so thousands of them were smuggled in.
Iran’s regular internet connection has been shut off by the government for over 120 hours now, a move intended to allow it to crush the escalating protests with brutal force without international backlash. Aside from coordinating protests, protesters are reliant on internet connections with the outside world to broadcast pictures and videos of the crackdown to elicit international sympathy.
The blackout and suppression of Starlink have been effective in this goal; the known number of dead protesters now ranges wildly from 500 to over 12,000, with the lack of outside communication making it near impossible to calculate. The higher figures come from limited eyewitness testimony, who report Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps security forces mowing down largely unarmed protesters with heavy machine guns and assault rifles. The limited number of videos that have emerged show hundreds of corpses strewn across the floors of hospitals and morgues.
IRAN’S CROWN PRINCE CALLS FOR RENEWED NATIONWIDE PROTESTS DESPITE KILLINGS: ‘THIS IS A WAR’
The nationwide protests, which began on Dec. 28, 2025, have become the fastest-escalating and deadliest protest wave since the 1979 revolution. Thousands of protesters and hundreds of security forces have been killed, with most of the deaths occurring over the past week.
The protests began in response to an economic collapse, with the Iranian rial losing a huge amount of its value. The currency has lost over half its value against the U.S. dollar over the past year, according to the New York Times, and inflation reached over 42% in December 2025. Conditions were further exacerbated by recent military defeats, crippling sanctions, corruption, and an unprecedented water crisis.