Musk’s Starlink: Gateway between Iran, the world

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Six months after Iranians started anti-regime protests across the country, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink has proven handy in connecting the people in the restricted country to the outside, users told Rudaw.

As protests spread across the country in September, the SpaceX Chief Executive said that he would activate his satellite internet service in Iran as the regime was monitoring and restricting internet usage for its people.

In December, Musk said that they were approaching 100 active Starlinks in Iran. However for Iranians inside the country, accessing the internet provider would need specific receivers that had to be smuggled into the country.

A special Rudaw English correspondent in Iran spoke to users of the Starlink service in February about the advantages, but also the difficulties they face in using Starlink. Rudaw withholds the identities of its special correspondent and the users interviewed for their safety.

“I have been using it for around three months, they [receivers] were send by a group of Iranian organizations in Europe for activists in the country, some anonymous people called me and gave it to me,” Qani’* told Rudaw English.

According to Qani’ setting up the system is problematic for an average person, since they will have to know how to use VPNs to activate it since Iran is sanctioned.

Though the satellite service has helped many like Qani’ in showing the outside world the regime’s brutality against its own people, it does not come without its complications.

One of the complications that they face is a lack of spare parts to the already illegally smuggled in receiver, and often times, they face connection cuts that need up to a minute to restore network, however in compare to the government monitored internet service, Starlink has done a huge service to anti-regime protestors.

“It is very useful for me, for social media, for connection, many of those people that I had lost contact with, I regained contact through this,” Hemin*, another Starlink user inside Iran said. “Apart from myself, my surrounding has made use of it too, we have found a way to share the internet, but for security reasons I cannot say how.”

Rudaw understands that Starlink receivers are smuggled into Iran either through the Iranian border with the Kurdistan Region, or through cargo ships in the Gulf.

The Iranian regime and its loyalist armed forces are accused of the murder of hundreds and arrest of thousands since protests started last September across the country, sparked by the death of young Kurdish woman Zhina (Mahsa) Amini while in the custody of the morality police.

The government is also accused of several freedom violations, including restriction of internet access.

In their latest report on February 20, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said that at least 530 protesters, including 71 children, have been killed and over 19,700 have been arrested since the protests began.

Several Iranian officials and institutions have been sanctioned by the West ever since.

Rudaw English has withheld the full names of the subjects and the identity of the special correspondent out of concerns for their safety.