A SpaceX Falcon 9 carries a batch of Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida in September 2022.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 carries a batch of Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida in September 2022.
Iran says it switched off part of the world’s best-known workaround for internet shutdowns, and it now has a warning for the network behind it. On Monday, October 5, Mohammad-Amin Aghamiri, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, claimed the country disabled Starlink terminals during January’s nationwide internet blackout and said SpaceX’s satellite network could become a “legitimate military target” if it is used as a tool of war.
It is the first time an Iranian official has publicly claimed responsibility for the disruption that hit Starlink users in January, according to Cybernews. The claim has not been independently verified. What Aghamiri chose to say, and what he left out, matters to the owners of the estimated 50,000 Starlink terminals active inside Iran and to every government and activist that treats satellite internet as insurance against a shutdown.
What Aghamiri Said on Monday
Aghamiri, who also heads Iran’s National Cyberspace Center, made the remarks at the third Internet Businesses Conference, an event hosted by the country’s cyber police, FATA, according to the Iranian news agency Borna. His comments were also carried by the Fars News Agency, which IranWire describes as affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to Borna, he said Iran “successfully disabled Starlink terminals during the events of Dey”, the Persian calendar month that runs from late December to around January 20, and called it an “important and completely successful technical operation.” IranWire quoted him describing Iran as “the first country to successfully and deliberately shut down Starlink operations during the timeframe it required.”
The warning came next. “If satellite internet infrastructure is used as a tool of war, it can naturally become a legitimate military target, and the country has the necessary readiness at all levels to confront such conditions,” he said, in Borna’s English rendering. The Fars version, as reported by IranWire, was shorter: “If this platform is used as a tool of warfare, it can be considered a legitimate military target in the future.”
He also said Iran has additional technology to identify and block terminals, but he did not name the method used in January or say when it was deployed. IranWire noted that he did not clarify whether a future target would mean terminals used by people inside Iran or other parts of the network’s infrastructure, such as satellites and ground stations.
The January Blackout Behind the Claim
The events Aghamiri described began with protests on December 28, 2025. The EU institutions’ cybersecurity service, CERT-EU, said the unrest was driven by soaring prices and a collapsing currency and spread across all 31 provinces. On January 8, the authorities cut the country off. Cloudflare recorded a 98.5 per cent collapse in Iranian internet traffic within 30 minutes, and NetBlocks measured non-satellite connectivity at under 2 per cent of normal levels, Rest of World reported at the time.
Starlink was the obvious workaround, but never a mass one. Cybernews reports that fewer than 1 per cent of Iranians were using it during the shutdown, with an estimated 50,000 terminals active in the country, where people caught with one risk jail. Reuters reported on January 13 that the service “is still working in some places in Iran, despite being banned by authorities,” as quoted by Cybernews.
The toll of the January crackdown remains disputed. Iranian authorities reported more than 3,000 deaths during January 8 and 9 and blamed the United States and Israel for what they called “terrorist acts”, while most rights groups in the region say Iranian forces were responsible, according to Cybernews. Officials, Aghamiri among them, describe the unrest as the “Dey coup”, a framing that Gadget Review notes “belongs to Tehran, not to the public record.”
What Independent Monitors Actually Measured
Outside observers did record a serious disruption. In its January cyber brief, published on February 2, CERT-EU said that on January 12 several media outlets reported Iran was still blocking signals from Starlink satellites, “likely through sophisticated military jamming equipment.” It added that “uplink and downlink traffic has been affected to up to 80%.” The same brief said it was “currently unconfirmed” whether Iran had outside help, while noting theories that China or Russia assisted with the jamming.
Rest of World reported that the method was military-grade GPS jamming. Starlink terminals rely on satellite positioning signals to locate themselves and connect, so interfering with those signals can make a dish unreliable without touching anything in orbit. Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights at the Miaan Group, was quoted by the publication in January: “It is still operational, but due to security risks, information is reaching outside the country more slowly.”
That is the gap in Monday’s claim. Degrading a service by up to 80 per cent in parts of a country is not proof that Iran disabled Starlink outright, and the January reporting described users still getting online in some areas, particularly border towns. Gadget Review, which examined the statement on Monday, put it plainly: “Until independent verification arrives, Iran’s claim remains an official assertion, not an established technical fact.”
Why the Military-Target Warning Is the Bigger Story
The jamming claim looks backwards; the threat looks forwards. Starlink has already become critical infrastructure in wars and crises. In Ukraine, Russia has tried to jam the service since 2022, and Rest of World reported that SpaceX pushed software updates within hours to restore service there. No equivalent fix had arrived for Iran when the publication reported in January, and SpaceX had not commented on the disruption.
Washington was involved at the time. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in January that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had discussed restoring internet access in Iran, Rest of World reported, although it was unclear whether any agreement was reached.
Aghamiri’s wording is conditional, tying any targeting to use “as a tool of war”, but it arrives at a tense moment for Iran. Borna reported that he said cyberattacks against the country started in the first moments of what he described as recent enemy military aggression. Cybernews reported that a further blackout lasting 88 days followed US-Israeli strikes at the end of February, and that it is said to be the longest digital communications blackout on record. Cybernews also suggested the statement could mean the IRGC is developing tools to disrupt the network in military operations, a reading Iranian officials have not confirmed.
Norway, the ITU and Who Answers for a Satellite Network
Monday also opened a diplomatic front. The Iranian Foreign Ministry took up its complaint with Norway’s ambassador, protesting what it called Oslo’s “inaction” over Starlink operating inside Iran, Cybernews reported. Norway is involved for a regulatory reason: it acts as the “notifying administration” for Starlink at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency that coordinates satellite spectrum. That makes Oslo responsible for overseeing the system’s compliance with ITU rules, even though SpaceX operates the network.
Iran has pressed Norway on the issue since March 2023. The ministry accuses Oslo of failing “to respond to Iran’s requests for effective and urgent measures to stop the activities of the Starlink system, which violate Iran’s sovereignty and national security.” Tehran says the service is used for “espionage,” “sabotage,” “terrorism” and “subversion.” Cybernews did not report a response from Oslo.
The dispute exposes an awkward question for every satellite operator. Landing rights are granted country by country, but a dish on a roof can connect to a satellite overhead without asking the government below. Iran is using the ITU process to argue that unlicensed service inside its borders breaks international rules. Rest of World, by contrast, has described Starlink as critical infrastructure for aid workers and journalists in places such as Myanmar and Sudan.
What It Means for People Who Rely on Satellite Internet
For Starlink users inside Iran, the practical message is that jamming may not be the only risk. Aghamiri said Iran has systems that can identify terminals, not only block them, and owning one is already illegal. Gadget Review noted that users holding unauthorised terminals “already risked arrest on top of degraded service”, and that Reuters has reported tens of thousands of terminals may have been smuggled into the country through unofficial channels.
For people elsewhere who see Starlink as a backstop against shutdowns, January was a test case. Rest of World warned that “if Iran’s jamming techniques spread, the last workaround for connecting during a blackout may no longer work.” Iran’s own record makes that more than a hypothetical: the Internet Society counts 17 internet shutdowns in Iran since 2018, according to the publication, which also reported that a “white list” system gave government-aligned media selective access in January while ordinary citizens stayed cut off.
What to Watch Next
- Verification. No independent monitor has confirmed that Starlink was fully shut down, rather than heavily degraded, in January.
- SpaceX’s response. The company had not commented on the Iranian disruption when Rest of World reported in January, and none of the coverage of Monday’s remarks reviewed here carried a statement from it.
- The ITU track. Iran’s diplomatic pressure on Norway is the formal route by which it can challenge the service’s legality.
- The condition in the threat. Aghamiri tied any targeting to the network being used “as a tool of war”, a condition he did not define.
Satellite internet was supposed to make national shutdowns harder to enforce. Iran’s message on Monday is that it believes it can blunt that advantage, and that it reserves the right to treat the network as a military target if it is used in a conflict. Whether the first part survives independent scrutiny will shape how seriously the second is taken. Governments are reaching further into how people get online and earn a living there, a trend mw3.news has also followed in Pakistan’s new tax on creator income.
