WEB WAR: After Shutting All Internet in the Country, Iranian Forces Are Now Jamming Starlink Service, While Users on the Ground Try to Bypass This New Censorship
It’s a technological ‘cat and mouse’ dispute.
As massive protests took to the streets of Iran for days on end, the Ayatollahs’ regime shut down the country’s internet completely.
That left the insurgents relying almost solely on the Starlink services made free by Elon Musk during the confrontations.
So the Iranian government started a two-pronged approach: begin cracking down and seizing all the Starlink terminals it could find, and at the same time, deploy military-grade level jammers to (so far, successfully) disrupt Starlink satellite service.
Both SpaceX engineers and Iranian protesters on the ground are now seeking ways to circumvent this censorship.
France24 reported:
“Iranian authorities cut the public’s access to the internet and telephone communications on January 8. The networks were later partially reinstated, but with severe restrictions. The Iranian regime has been facing a series of protests since late December. In an attempt to crush the movement, the Iranian government also tried to break the last international communication link available to Iranians: Starlink.
Starlink, which provides internet access through a constellation of satellites, was thought to be out of the Iranian authorities’ reach for censorship. However, in recent days, Starlink has been subject to a jamming campaign that has seriously impaired its use.”
AP and ToI are reporting that the Iranians have succeeded in jamming Starlink. Starlink was supposed to be unjammable. It seems likely Russia sold Iran new electronic warfare systems and these are being used in some novel way to jam Starlink. This is a gamechanger. ️ pic.twitter.com/N4qTQdhUra
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) January 11, 2026
Experts say that the worsening of the Starlink connection observed in Iran in recent days has resulted in a data ‘packet loss of 30 to 80 percent’, likely coming from a sophisticated form of jamming, an ‘active interference’.
“Active interference involves saturating a satellite’s transmission channel. If you send “noise” or a fake signal to a satellite for long enough, then it is possible to disconnect its associated terminals.
‘In theory, this could render the satellite unusable [for the terminal]. So you can just jam, one after another, all of the visible [Starlink] satellites’, says Badsi.”
Iran is tracking down Starlink users, seizing terminals, and trying to disrupt the service with signal jamming, according to WSJ pic.twitter.com/QMAZmuN8Ge
— Current Report (@Currentreport1) January 13, 2026
The Cobra-V8, an Iranian electronic warfare system that is similar to the Russian-made 1RL257E Krasukha-4, might be in use to jam the transmission frequencies from Starlink terminals.
IRAN FLIPS THE KILL SWITCH ON STARLINK
Iran is actively jamming Starlink, shutting down the one tool protesters were using to stay online during the blackout.
Military-grade jammers, likely from Russia, are frying GPS signals and cutting off satellite links in key areas.… pic.twitter.com/Q0CNHprvaV
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 13, 2026
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