Clandestine network smuggling Starlink tech into Iran to beat internet blackout

bhouston

I suspect the Internet blackout in Iran is not actually related to its citizens - it isn't about silencing its citizens. It is to prevent hacking and tracking by US and Israel of what is going on over there, it is defensive since it has been shown that Iran's connected infrastructure is thoroughly compromised.

mlmonkey

Maybe we need to start a GoFundMe to sponsor some of these Starlink terminals.... ?

adiabatichottub

I learned from a BSides presentation that Ukranian military are using Starlink trancievers placed in pits to beat ground-based signal detection. Do with that what you will.

hirako2000

I thought that was exactly how the spies got made. As Iranians figured they could just narrow the signal.

coliveira

Is anyone still under the illusion that this has anything to do with "bringing democracy to the people" and not yet another scheme for the USA/Israel to control Iran? There is a limit for credulity...

jmyeet

For context: 1. The Iranian "protests" weren't organic. They were fomented by the US and Israel [1]. Trump openly admiited it [2]. 2. The MEK has an storied history, including being designated as a terrorist group for many years. But what's important is that Kurdish separatists have historically been used as a foil by the US against regimes designated as enemies and then repeatedly being abandoned eg [3]. At the same time, the US allows Turkey to bomb and otherwise oppress Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Syria eg [4]; 3. So what actually happened with the Iranian protests several months ago? The answer is that it's hard to say but there are some completely unfounded claims floating about like 20,000 to 30,000 dead. In 3 days. Amnesty International has scrutinized some of the claims [5]. It seems likely that at least 3000 died but were these protestors brutally crushed by the government or a the government quashing a foreign-backed uprising? We've established the foreign powers armed some of these groups; 4. The US essentially has no human intelligence in Iran. The US simply can't operate there. Israel can. Israel is made up of many ethnic groups, including people who are ethnically Persian and speak perfect Farsi. So part of the reason for the Internet crackdown is to stop Israeli intelligence assets operating freely in Iran, agree with that or not. Let's not forget that the US response to Pearl Harbor was to put literally every Japanese person into internment camps; 5. As another example of Israeli inteference in Iran, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan created a refugee crisis where over a million Afghan refugees in Iran. IT's widely believed that Mossad used these Afghan refugees to locale individuals for assassination, so much so that after the 12 day war Iran began expelling these refugees back to Afghanistan [6]; 6. The US has quite literally been screwing over Iran since at least 1953 when the CIA at the urging of the British overthrew their democratically elected government. Pretty much everything since, including the Islamic Revolution in 1979 is a direct consequence of US inteference. That's 73 years now. So my point is that you may look at the Internet blackout and say it's unfair that ordinary Iranians don't have Internet access. This is true but you should also know that Iran is in a war that it didn't start and such devices are being used by hostile foreign agents at a time of war when having such devices could get anyone having or transporting such devices executed. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-t... [2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-... [3]: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2012/03/09/mek-camp-ashraf [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Turkish_offensive_into_no... [5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap... [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Afghan_deportation_from_I...

fchicken

We are not the good guys in iran

shameonus

israel should be sanctioned until it gives up its nuclear weapons

m00dy

I know how to smuggle starlink devices in a mass scale into Iran.

ars

The Iranian bots/shills are unusually obvious in this thread. But something to think about: These accounts also post in other places, and are not as obvious. There is a "shadow war" happening via internet comments, and right now Iran is winning it. Locke and Demosthenes in Ender's game comes to mind.