The Ayatollah v Musk showdown that is shaping Iran’s fate
david blair
With two words, Elon Musk changed the classical methods of revolution forever. “Activate Starlink,” he said in a social media post about Iran in 2022, suddenly giving the Islamic Republic’s 90 million citizens access to the internet in a way that no regime could block or censor.
This was an extraordinary challenge to a system of control meticulously constructed by the Iranian leadership and enforced for decades by a brutal security state. The regime has routinely sought to conceal its bloody crackdown on protests by disrupting the internet and preventing dissidents from communicating or organizing.
During the current unrest, authorities have taken the draconian step of shutting down the entire country’s internet connection for the first time since 2019.
A dramatic national power outage has been in place since last Thursday; there were even disruptions to telephone networks and landline phones, forcing Iran to revert to the pre-19th century communications era and causing massive economic damage.
Above, Musk’s constellation of SpaceX satellites is supposed to give any Iranian with a Starlink terminal (a satellite dish about the size of a laptop) a way to bypass all restrictions and connect to the internet.
Up to 50,000 of these terminals, smuggled into the country since 2022 when Musk first activated the satellite network, are believed to be active in Iran, defying the official ban.
But this time, Musk’s system appears to have lost its maneuverability as the state adjusts its tactics to an increasingly sophisticated technological cat-and-mouse game.
The regime’s experts have so far implemented two highly effective countermeasures. Starlink can’t jam internet connections, but they can slow them down to the point where they’re nearly unusable.
Each Starlink terminal uses the global positioning system (GPS) to find the correct location for the satellite link. Security forces are now jamming GPS signals by focusing on areas where protests are taking place in Iran.
Mahsa Alimardani, deputy director of Witness, which uses audiovisual technology to document human rights abuses, says the “military-grade” equipment needed for this purpose is “probably provided by Russia or China.”
Both Russia and China have done their best to figure out how to blind or disrupt the GPS network invented and installed by America for military purposes. Russia has undertaken this task with particular urgency, as Ukraine relies on Starlink for internet connectivity on the battlefield.
Iran’s rulers may now be drawing on the expertise gained by two other authoritarian states with which they maintain close, if cautious, relations.
The regime’s second countermeasure is to cut off the connection between Starlink terminals and Musk’s satellites. This result can be achieved by directly interfering with the required frequencies.
Taken together, these techniques managed to slow down Starlink connections in Iran from 30 percent to over 80 percent during peak hours of protests. Musk’s network has never been disrupted so successfully before.
As the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij militia try to suppress the demonstrations, technology is as important as batons, bullets and tear gas. During previous outbreaks of unrest – most notably during mass rallies against the fraudulent 2009 presidential election – the regime had been caught off guard by its young, networked and tech-savvy opponents.
Judging by the countermeasures they have taken against Starlink, Iran’s rulers may be closing this knowledge gap and getting ahead in the technological arms race, at least for now.
There is a way for Musk to thwart the regime’s campaign against Starlink terminals in Iran, but not yet. Every smartphone produced in the world since 2022 has the technology to connect directly to Musk’s satellites without the need for any terminals and use the billionaire’s constellation as a huge and invisible telephone tower in the skies.
The regime can render 50,000 terminals unusable, but it cannot achieve this result with the tens of millions of smartphones in the hands of ordinary Iranians.
But there is currently not enough satellite capacity to provide full internet access over these “direct-to-cell” – or “D2C” – connections for 90 million Iranians. Moreover, D2C services are currently offered not directly by Musk’s company SpaceX, but by local operators.
So it’s not just that more satellites need to be launched; A new commercial model will also need to be designed to allow Iranians to connect to the internet using the Starlink satellite. As Alimardani explains: “D2C satellite connectivity can reach millions of Iranians with phones they already own. What is missing is the policy framework, commercial model and political will to implement it.”
That day will undoubtedly come when it will allow protesters to regain their technological edge, but if prioritized, it could take a year or two for full D2C internet coverage to be achieved for Iran. A more basic service that allows text linking could be made available more quickly.
The only question is whether it will be too late to change the course of events in Iran’s current turmoil.
Telegraph, London
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