Starlink has shown what a game-changer it is.
At the beginning of the massive popular demonstrations in Iran, Elon Musk took the bold initiative of providing free Starlink services for the protestors.
A few days in, Iran shut down the Internet in the entire country. For the first time since 2019, a nationwide blackout was imposed, disrupting phone networks and landline telephones.
Starlink became the sole web outlet for protesters to get informed, communicate, and share the images of the momentous developments with the world.
It didn’t take long for the brutal Iranian regime to crack down on Starlink terminals, arrest ‘terrorist’ users, and deploy military-grade jammers to impede the functioning of the service.
Now, reports say SpaceX engineers are hard at work to bypass the jamming and give protesters a voice, again.
NEW Iran is hunting down Starlink users, seizing terminals, and trying to jam the signal as part of its internet crackdown, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Iranian authorities, amid a near-total internet blackout imposed to suppress anti-government protests, have reportedly… pic.twitter.com/vn2Lu87ss1
— EuroPost Agency (@EuroPostAgency) January 13, 2026
The Telegraph reported:
“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.”
But as of now, the system seems to be losing the ‘technological cat and mouse game’.
“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.”
The ‘military-grade’ equipment needed for this purpose was allegedly supplied by Russia or China. Never before has SpaceX’s network been disrupted so successfully.
“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.
[…] 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.”
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The post Musk Stands Up Against the Ayatollahs, as Iranian Regime Cracks Down on Starlink Terminals, Deploys Military-Grade Jammers Against Sole Internet Option for Protesters appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.