How Iran’s regime has hidden its brutal crackdown

IRANIANS ARE accustomed to losing access to phone and internet services during unrest. The internet was cut off during protests in 2019 and during another big wave of demonstrations in 2022. But the current blackout is worse than anything experienced before. On January 8th internet connectivity fell to 1% of its normal levels, where it has remained. That has left Iranians struggling to communicate with each other and to get news of the uprising, and the increasingly bloody crackdown, to the outside world.

There is some indication that the protests may have slowed down by January 12th, when the regime held large counter-demonstrations. Protesters may have been deterred by the violence of the preceding days, when at least 500 and possibly more than 1,000 people are thought to have been killed by security forces. Rather than covering up the massacres, state television broadcast images of victims’ bodies and acknowledged that many had been “ordinary people” rather than armed saboteurs, as the government claims. “We are not looking for war, but we are prepared for war,” declared Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, speaking in Tehran on January 12th. The situation was under “total control”, he insisted, implausibly, and suggested that internet access would soon be restored.

It is hard to make a definitive judgment about the situation on the ground because Iran successfully clamped down on information flowing out of the country. Iran’s regime is well practised at severing its digital links with the outside world. It does so in several ways. One is to manipulate something called the Border Gateway Protocol, which determines how the global internet connects to the Iranian one. Another is to look at the individual packets of data traveling over networks, blocking those associated with virtual private networks (VPNs) which typically allow Iranians to access otherwise forbidden sites, while still allowing access to government websites. Iran also operates a domestic internet, a state-controlled network, that allows it to maintain some services so that the country is not plunged into the analogue age even during this kind of blackout. These methods are imperfect. In previous crackdowns, the government has struggled to block VPNs as quickly as new ones crop up, what one former diplomat calls a game of “whack-a-mole”. But some VPNs are thought to be run by the government, as traps, and the tactic is effective enough to slow the flow of information.

One way to get around this digital crackdown is to rely on satellites. Starlink terminals, built by SpaceX, an American firm run by Elon Musk, are illegal in Iran. But they have been smuggled into the country in growing numbers since the protests of 2022. Tens of thousands of terminals are thought to be in circulation. But Iran appears to be disrupting access to these, too. The Economist has spoken to some people who are still using Starlink freely. “It’s patchy,” says a person inside Iran with knowledge of the situation. “Some still appear to have it, some—including some embassies—seem to be completely cut off.”

On January 9th, even after the internet shut down, torrents of images and videos were flowing out of Iran, according to people monitoring the situation. By January 11th something had changed, and the flow slowed to a trickle. Iranians living abroad said it had become increasingly difficult to contact their relatives in the country. In theory, it is exceptionally hard to jam Starlink because a jammer has to overwhelm each ground terminal and its individual connection with a satellite in space. Because the terminals use Ka-band signals, a microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the jammer has to be very close to the signal to swamp it. Russia has done this in Ukraine, increasingly successfully, but it works only in patches along the front line rather than across the whole country. In urban areas, Iranian security forces mount high-powered jammers on high points, covering a larger area. But a determined protester would be able to record footage and broadcast it later from a terminal located at a safe distance away.

Another way exists to obstruct Starlink’s operation. Iran might be jamming GPS signals, suggests Tom Withington, an expert on electronic warfare, something that is easier to do on a nationwide scale. That prevents Starlink terminals from knowing their own locations, complicating their ability to know where to look for satellites overhead. SpaceX also “geofences” terminals, preventing them from being used in particular places—for instance to guide drones deep into Russia—so GPS spoofing can bamboozle them in that way, too.

Donald Trump, having warned that he would intervene if the regime killed protesters, is now mulling how to respond to the violence. On January 11th the American president said that one of his aims was to “get the internet going, if that’s possible”. One option is reported to be offensive cyber operations. But people familiar with such actions say that it would be extremely difficult to keep Iran’s internet on in this way, in part because the Iranian state keeps a tight grip on telecommunications firms.

Far easier would be to flood Iran with Starlink terminals, perhaps sent over the border with Turkey on well-worn smuggling routes, much as Mr Musk did for Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion—a step which provided an invaluable lifeline to the country’s armed forces. “We may speak to Elon,” said Mr Trump, “because, as you know, he’s very good at that kind of thing.” ■