How Iran Blocked the Impenetrable Starlink Internet Is Being Closely Watched by Other Oppressive Regimes

Tehran’s sky glowed orange from burning cars as protesters scattered through darkened streets, the acrid smell of tear gas mixing with diesel exhaust. In the chaos, Mariam, a 25-year-old protester who asked to be identified only by her first name, crouched behind a concrete barrier, checking her phone as it searched for her Starlink terminal’s WiFi signal, a lifeline she had relied upon so many times before.“This time, nothing,” Mariam recalls to the New York Sun of that night in early January. “It would be days before I could connect again, to reach people and show them what was happening in our streets.”Mariam’s terminal was among thousands the U.S. government smuggled into Iran following the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, part of a covert operation to help Iranians circumvent government censorship. The terminals, purchased through intermediaries to avoid direct U.S. government involvement with SpaceX, were routed through neighboring countries and distributed by opposition groups inside Iran.Since January 8, when Iranian authorities imposed a near-total communications blackout amid nationwide protests, the Islamic Republic has waged an unprecedented electronic warfare campaign against the satellite internet service that activists counted on as their final link to the world.Military-grade GPS jammers have reportedly slashed satellite internet performance by as much as 80 percent in parts of the country, the first confirmed large-scale jamming of Starlink in a conflict zone.Iran’s jamming campaign exposes critical vulnerabilities in commercial satellite systems facing state-level adversaries. While Starlink has proven resilient against Russian electronic warfare in Ukraine, Tehran appears to have exploited weaknesses in the service’s reliance on GPS by combining uplink jamming and GPS spoofing.China and Russia are closely monitoring Tehran’s success. Effective Starlink countermeasures could reshape calculations about communications security in Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Eastern Europe. SpaceX has not publicly commented on the Iranian campaign, though the company has historically responded with rapid firmware updates; a technological arms race now extending beyond active war zones.For Iranian protesters, the stakes are existential: without reliable connectivity, documenting regime abuses becomes nearly impossible, and the movement’s ability to coordinate and maintain international attention continues to erode.The Unbreakable Network BreaksStarlink was designed to withstand exactly this kind of censorship. Its thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites, shifting frequencies, and independence from terrestrial infrastructure made it the ultimate fail-safe for activists, journalists, and militaries operating under blackout conditions. When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow’s initial attempts to jam Starlink were quickly countered. SpaceX engineers responded to Russian electronic warfare attacks with software updates deployed within hours, restoring service so quickly that one Pentagon official described the response as eyewatering.Tehran has succeeded, at least partially, where Moscow failed. “In Iran, it appears now that what was happening was that the Starlink ground terminals were getting their GPS units spoofed, which meant that the terminals thought that they were physically somewhere they were not and thus they looked in the wrong place in space for the Starlink satellites,” chief director for space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, Victoria Samson, tells the Sun.The Iranian approach exploits a fundamental design characteristic of commercial satellite terminals. Starlink terminals rely on GPS signals to locate themselves and connect to satellites overhead. By disrupting these positioning signals, Iranian authorities can render the devices unreliable without directly targeting the satellites themselves.“Iran does not necessarily require a specialized, Starlink-specific weapon to cause disruption,” CEO of spatial intelligence company Zephr.xyz and a leading expert on GPS interference attacks, Sean Gorman, tells the Sun. “Many of the same electronic warfare tools Iran has historically used against GPS and satellite broadcasts can be effective here as well. Starlink terminals rely on GNSS for timing, location, and antenna pointing assistance, meaning widespread GNSS disruption can degrade service even if the satellite link itself is not directly targeted.”Dr. Gorman’s company has conducted extensive research on Russia’s real-world electronic warfare in Ukraine and the Middle East. His firm recently received a contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop real-time detection of GPS jamming and spoofing in contested domains. According to Dr. Gorman’s analysis, Iran demonstrated broadscale GPS degradation targeting Tehran on January 8, with jamming later shifting to Bandar Abbas near the Straits of Hormuz while continuing in Tabriz to the north.The jamming campaign leverages equipment obtained through military-to-military technology transfers. Intelligence reports confirmed Russia supplied Iran with the Krasukha-4 electronic warfare system in August 2025, following the 12-day war with Israel. Russia also transferred advanced Murmansk-BN long-range communications jammers to Iran in August 2024.Tehran, however, may not have needed foreign hardware at all. The country has developed its own sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities, including the Cobra V8 system unveiled in 2023. According to Iran’s state-run news agency IRNA, the Cobra V8 is a versatile multi-mission electronic warfare platform capable of intercepting, analyzing, and jamming enemy radar systems.“Iran should not be underestimated in this domain,” Dr. Gorman says. “The regime has demonstrated significant GPS jamming and spoofing capabilities over many years, particularly during periods of heightened tension with Israel and the U.S.”The Silicon Valley ResponseSpaceX has not publicly commented on the Iranian jamming campaign, yet activists report the company responded swiftly. On January 13, SpaceX pushed a critical software update to terminals inside Iran designed to boost signal resilience against government jamming efforts. The company also activated free service nationwide, waiving subscription fees to maximize access during the crisis.Executive director of Holistic Resilience, Ahmad Ahmadian, a nonprofit focused on Iranian internet freedom, told reporters that the software update reduced packet loss from as high as 80 percent to approximately 10 percent in some areas. The update enables terminals to bypass GPS interference by relying on Starlink’s own satellites to triangulate locations rather than external positioning signals. Yet fundamental limitations remain.“Software can improve resilience significantly, but there are fundamental physics problems you can’t engineer around with code alone,” director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, Carlos Perez, tells the Sun. Mr. Perez explained that while software can enable adaptive beamforming to null interference, frequency hopping, and improved error correction, it cannot overcome near-field, high-power jamming when the jammer is physically close to the terminal.“If someone parks a multi-kilowatt jammer 100 meters from your terminal broadcasting across the entire Ku-band, no amount of clever software is saving that link,” he continues. “Physics wins.”What Iran Reveals About Future ConflictsThe Iranian jamming campaign offers the first real-world test of the vulnerability of commercial satellite constellations to sustained electronic warfare, and the results should concern Pentagon planners. The United States military has become deeply reliant on SpaceX’s Starlink for battlefield communications, with the Space Force burning through a $900 million contract ceiling and planning to expand it into the billions. The Pentagon is also contracting with SpaceX for a government-owned MILNET satellite constellation comprising more than 480 satellites. Yet the Iran experience raises fundamental questions about reliability in peer-state conflicts.“Any communications system can be disrupted in a full-scale conflict, whether it’s satellite-based or on the ground,” Dr. Gorman observes. “Commercial constellations like Starlink have real strengths and real vulnerabilities. Their advantage is scale. Thousands of satellites in LEO mean stronger signals and the ability to route around damage. The downside is a broad attack surface.”Those vulnerabilities are now being examined in detail by America’s adversaries, with China and Russia openly studying how to neutralize Starlink in a high-end conflict.Chinese military researchers recently published findings in the peer-reviewed journal Systems Engineering and Electronics suggesting that jamming Starlink across a region the size of Taiwan would require between 1,000 and 2,000 electronic warfare drones operating in coordination. The study, conducted by researchers from Zhejiang University and the Beijing Institute of Technology, modeled distributed jamming networks capable of overwhelming satellite signals through cumulative interference.Russia has developed dedicated counter-Starlink systems. The Kalinka platform, dubbed the “Starlink Killer” by Western intelligence analysts, can reportedly detect and disrupt signals to and from Starlink satellites with the specific goal of interfering with Ukrainian military communications. More concerning, leaked United States military documents suggest Kalinka may be capable of detecting terminals connected to Starshield, the military version of Starlink designed with enhanced security features.“The Pentagon shouldn’t abandon systems like Starlink, but it also shouldn’t treat them as guaranteed,” Dr. Gorman says. “Commercial satellites should be used as part of a layered communications approach, alongside protected military satellites and multiple orbits. The goal isn’t perfect connectivity in a war with China or Russia, but the ability to operate through disruption.”Ms. Samson notes that even purpose-built military systems face challenges. The Pentagon has worked for decades on GPS III, designed to be harder to jam, with satellites launched starting in 2005. However, the modernized ground control system wasn’t handed to the Space Force until last year, and upgrading all receivers takes considerable time.That lag highlights a simple problem: even advanced military systems take years to fully work as intended, while adversaries learn how to disrupt them much faster.The Strategic Calculus ShiftsIran’s partial success in disrupting Starlink carries implications far beyond Tehran’s streets. Activists in Myanmar, Sudan, and other conflict zones have come to depend on satellite internet as critical infrastructure for communication when governments impose blackouts. If Iran’s jamming playbook spreads, that workaround becomes far less reliable.“If Iran’s jamming playbook spreads — and let’s be honest, it will — we’re looking at authoritarian regimes gaining another tool for information control,” Mr. Perez says. “Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, other places where governments want to control narratives and isolate populations; they’re watching and learning.”It is not a hypothetical concern.“We’ve seen this happen already,” Ms. Samson says, citing a fall 2022 incident when Elon Musk ordered SpaceX to cut Starlink coverage of some parts of Ukraine, resulting in at least 100 terminals losing connection. “Soldiers panicked, drones surveilling Russian forces went dark, and long-range artillery units, reliant on Starlink to aim their fire, struggled to hit targets.”The implications extend beyond any single conflict.“The bigger question is whether regimes like Myanmar or Sudan get outside help to improve their capabilities, because that’s often what determines how effective these tactics become,” Dr. Gorman says. “GNSS jamming is already part of the playbook for many authoritarian regimes, and countries are constantly watching how others use electronic warfare.”Yet the battle remains dynamic. “This isn’t a one-way street,” Dr. Gorman says. “SpaceX is learning from these incidents, just as the U.S. military is. Some governments may try similar tactics, but Starlink and its users will adapt as well.”For now, Iranian authorities lack the resources to block Starlink nationwide. The service reportedly continues functioning in border regions and some rural areas where jamming is less concentrated. Urban centers where protests have been most intense, however, face severe disruptions.“This doesn’t mean Starlink becomes useless for activists and aid workers, but it does mean we need to think about resilience differently,” Mr. Perez adds. “Operational security around terminal usage, geographic distribution, timing of critical communications, backup connectivity options — all the tradecraft we apply in hostile environments needs to evolve. What worries me most? The normalization of communications denial as a tool of authoritarian control, and the lag time between technical countermeasures and regime adaptation.”SpaceX did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment.

How Iran Blocked the Impenetrable Starlink Internet Is Being Closely Watched by Other Oppressive Regimes

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