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Free Starlink access for Iran seen as game changer for demonstrators getting their message out

By The Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — Iranian demonstrators’ ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government’s strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.

The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown of telecommunications and internet access to Iran’s 85 million people on Jan. 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic Republic’s faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.

SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday and that the company has gone even further by pushing a firmware update to help circumvent government efforts to jam the satellite signals.

The moves by Starlink came two days after President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was going to reach out to Musk to ask for Starlink help for protesters, a call later confirmed by his press secretary, though it’s not clear if that is what prompted Musk to act.

“Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.

“That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles. “I think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone’s understanding of what’s happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”

Since the outbreak of demonstrations Dec. 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the U.S. or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.

Cat-and-mouse as authorities hunt for Starlink devices

The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country’s mandatory headscarf law, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.

Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going to great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.

Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna that requires a line of sight to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more “extreme tactics” now to jam Starlink’s radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed its firmware update to avoid jamming.

Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used. There have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.

“There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran in 2012 after serving time in prison for student activism. “The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.

A free Starlink could increase the flow of information out of Iran

Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.

Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications. He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.

“This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” he said. “But despite this, the information was coming out, and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.

Musk’s involvement had raised concerns over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine’s Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.

As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn’t see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

“Looking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest … in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

Starlink’s moves to circumvent Tehran’s efforts to shut down communications is being watched closely around the world. The satellite service has expanded rapidly in recent years, securing licenses in more than 120 countries, including some with authoritarian rulers who have persecuted journalists and protesters.

Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk of activists becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are no comparable alternatives.

China has been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating “government-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.”

“It’s just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” she said.

___

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this report.

How advanced is Iran’s nuclear program? Here’s what we know.

By CBS News
▶ Watch Video: Trump says strikes on Iran will continue "as long as necessary" Washington — President Trump ordered military strikes on Iran early Saturday, Feb. 28, after pressing the country to curtail its nuclear program, grappling with an issue that has vexed presidents from both parties for decades. Iran — which denies having any nuclear weapons ambitions — has amassed a stockpile of uranium that is enriched to near the level of purity necessary to build a bomb. Mr. Trump ordered strikes on a trio of key Iranian nuclear sites last June, causing extensive damage and leaving the status of the stockpile unclear. Now, less than a year later, the president is carrying out a much larger military campaign."We will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon," Mr. Trump said in a video announcing what he called a "massive and ongoing operation." He said he had "sought repeatedly to make a deal," but Iranian officials "rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore."The United States and Iran had engaged in several rounds of indirect negotiations in recent weeks, as a fleet of U.S. naval vessels and military aircraft arrived in the Middle East to ratchet up the pressure. Here are some details on Iran's nuclear program: How close is Iran to making a nuclear weapon, and is it building one right now?In recent years, Iran has rapidly increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. As of mid-June 2025, shortly before the U.S.'s strikes that month, Iran had enriched some 972 pounds of uranium up to 60% purity, according to estimates from the International Atomic Energy Agency. By comparison, Iran had 605.8 pounds of 60%-enriched uranium in February 2025, and 267.9 pounds a year before that, the IAEA has said. According to the U.N. watchdog's metrics, about 92.5 pounds of 60%-enriched uranium is enough to build a single nuclear weapon if enriched further.That material is just a short step away from weapons-grade 90%-enriched uranium. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated last May that it would take Iran "probably less than one week" to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make its first bomb, if it decided to do so. Actually building a bomb could take somewhat longer: Another intelligence summary from last year found that Iran could make a nuclear device within three to eight months unless it faced technical or logistical delays, CBS News has previously reported.What's not clear, however, is whether Iran has made the decision to build a nuclear weapon. Iran is believed to have halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and the U.S. intelligence community assessed last spring that the program hadn't restarted."Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but Iran has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so," the DIA said in May.Asked on Feb. 18 whether the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had seen any indication that Iran might currently be working to develop a nuclear weapon, the agency's director-general Rafael Grossi told a French television network it had not. "No," he told TF1, adding: "On the contrary, I see, today, a willingness on both sides to reach an agreement," referring to the U.S. and Iran.Iran, for its part, has long insisted that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, and that it does not intend to develop a nuclear weapon.Iran's stockpile includes uranium enriched far beyond the level needed for most non-military uses like nuclear power or medical applications. The IAEA said in May that Iran is now "the only non-nuclear-weapon State to produce such nuclear material."What impact did the last U.S. strikes on Iran have?Last June's airstrikes targeted Iran's Fordo and Natanz enrichment facilities and a research site near the city of Isfahan. It's not clear how much the strikes damaged Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Trump has long said the strikes "obliterated" the three nuclear sites, setting back the program by "basically decades." The IAEA's Grossi told CBS News in June that the strikes caused "severe damage" but not "total damage." In his interview with the French network in February, Grossi said Iran's nuclear material was "still there, in large quantities," despite the U.S. strikes, though "some of it may be less accessible." Iran also is not currently enriching uranium, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Feb. 25, though he alleged that "they're trying to get to the point where they ultimately can." Satellite images from late January show roofs built over damaged buildings at the Natanz and Isfahan sites, potentially indicating efforts by Iran to salvage any remaining materials. A confidential report issued by the IAEA assessed that Iran is conducting unexplained activity at nuclear sites that were bombed by the U.S., CBS News has confirmed.The IAEA says it withdrew its inspectors from Iran for safety reasons shortly after the June strikes, and Iran moved to suspend cooperation with the agency the following month. The agency said in November that it had been able to conduct some inspections in the months following the attacks, but not at any of the sites that were struck by U.S. forces.Iran downplayed the strikes, arguing they didn't eliminate its technological capabilities."Yes, you destroyed the facilities, the machines," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Fox News in January. "But the technology cannot be bombed, and the determination also cannot be bombed."What's the history of Iran's nuclear program?Iran's nuclear program dates back decades, with some early research activity taking place under the U.S.-allied government that controlled the country before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. By the mid-1980s, Iran started developing — or acquiring on the black market — the technology required to build centrifuges that can enrich uranium, according to the IAEA.The country's ambitions drew intense international pressure starting in 2002, when an anti-regime group alleged that Iran had secretly built a pair of nuclear facilities. Former President George W. Bush's administration later alleged that Iran was working to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The IAEA has said that until 2003, Iran had a "structured program" to carry out "activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device." The agency added that some of those activities have military and non-military uses, but some "are specific to nuclear weapons."While the U.S. intelligence assessment was that Iran stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons in 2003, the country resumed enriching uranium at various points after that. As a result, it had faced years of increasingly tight sanctions. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama's administration struck a deal with Iran and other global powers to limit the country's uranium stockpiles and enrichment capacity for a set period of time, and to submit Iran's nuclear program to IAEA monitoring, in exchange for sanctions relief. The agreement was known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.Three years later, Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. unilaterally from that deal, which he argued was insufficient. He imposed a new round of harsh sanctions, dubbing it a "maximum pressure" campaign to force Iran to negotiate a new agreement. Efforts by the Biden administration and European parties to the JCPOA to revive the deal were unsuccessful.Since then, Iran has stopped abiding by the terms of that agreement, dramatically ramping up its uranium enrichment program, including by enriching uranium to 60% purity for the first time.At times, Mr. Trump has pushed Iran to give up uranium enrichment altogether, rather than just sticking to lower levels of enrichment in order to support a civil nuclear program. "They want to enrich a little bit. You don't have to enrich when you have that much oil," the president said on Feb. 27. "I say, no enrichment." Araghchi has ruled out that idea, describing the enrichment program as a "matter of dignity and pride.""We have every right to enjoy a peaceful nuclear energy, including enrichment," he told CBS News in a Feb. 22 interview. "As a sovereign country, we have every right to decide for ourselves, by ourselves. We have developed this technology by ourselves, by our scientists, and it's very dear to us, because we have paid a lot."
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