Iranian Protesters Struggle to Activate Starlink and Circumvent Internet Restrictions

“We were disappointed and sad,” said Mr. Souzangar. “We are trying to keep the candles of hope lit in the darkest times of life.”

Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., didn’t respond to requests for comment. It is unclear if the Iranians’ failure to establish a satellite link was due to user problems or the Starlink system’s accessibility in Iran.

The incident highlights the hurdles facing Iranians who hope to keep alive a nationwide movement protesting Iran’s tight restrictions on personal freedom by using Starlink and other systems that claim to offer internet access that can circumvent government restrictions.

The protests began two weeks ago after the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman arrested for allegedly violating strict laws on women’s dress. Since then, Biden administration officials have moved to permit expanded internet service from outside Iran to help sustain the protests.

Mr. Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has been building a fleet of Starlink satellites in orbits relatively close to Earth, offering high-speed internet connections. The service hasn’t been available in heavily-sanctioned Iran, but the U.S. Treasury announced last month that it was expanding internet services available to Iranians in response to the protests.

When U.S. Secretary of State

Antony Blinken

tweeted on Sept. 23 that the administration “took action…to counter the Iranian government’s censorship,” Mr. Musk responded the same day that he was “Activating Starlink.”

The announcement raised hopes in Iran, but it also obscured the difficulties of quickly building an underground internet network in the country, political and technology analysts said.

Unlike a fiber-optic connection, the portable satellite dish in Starlink kits communicates with a constellation of satellites that beam internet data to and from ground stations. A router connects to the dish, allowing users to access the internet through Wi-Fi signals.

Using the system to aid the protests would require quickly smuggling Starlink kits into the country, getting them into the hands of tech-savvy activists, establishing satellite links and building out a network of users—a perhaps insurmountable logistical challenge in a country as closed as Iran, even for U.S. intelligence agencies, said former government officials and activists.

Even if sufficient terminals could be activated, they produce an easily-tracked signal when transmitting data, making it possible for Iran’s security agencies to locate and shut them down and arrest the users, technical experts said.

“Starlink is not a solution to the problem of internet connectivity in Iran,” said Skylar Thompson, the senior advocacy coordinator at Human Rights Activists in Iran, a nongovernmental organization. “It’s a Band-Aid of false hope.”

SpaceX is working to develop Starlink into a large global business. It said in a June presentation filed with U.S. telecommunications regulators that it had more than 400,000 Starlink subscribers worldwide. But a map on the company website shows Iran as one of the few countries where service is unavailable.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said that companies are already taking advantage of the loosening of export controls on providing internet services to Iran, but he declined to name them.

With normal access to the internet often blocked for long periods by authorities because of the protests, Iranians have resorted to using hot spots and virtual private network applications to bypass the blockade on social media apps.

In March, not long after SpaceX made Starlink available in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, Mr. Musk warned users about the risks of detection when using the system.

Unlike in Ukraine, which supported the company’s presence within its borders, Iran’s government isn’t interested in allowing Starlink terminals to be used openly.

Mr. Souzangar, a 34-year-old computer network engineer in Tehran who calls himself a “social activist,” said he had already been working on connecting two Starlink terminals that a friend received weeks before the protests began in Iran. The kits arrived in Dubai and were shipped cross the Persian Gulf to Iran.

The two men conducted one unsuccessful test of the system in Tehran. But when they heard Mr. Musk say last week that the system was active, they rushed to try again, thinking the company might have modified its system to cover Iran. The failure of the test led Mr. Souzangar to conclude that the system isn’t working because there isn’t a Starlink ground station close enough to Iran.

SpaceX has also been launching Starlink satellites linked through a laser-communications system, a capability the company has promoted. That system should allow for at least some internet connections in Iran, satellite experts said.

For Mr. Souzangar, his attempts to help his friend get the Starlink system operating has left them both fearful of detection by authorities. The strain has been too much for his friend who brought the Starlink devices into the country. Worried about being arrested, he told Mr. Souzangar a few days ago that he had sold both of the kits.

“People have the right to access the internet,” Mr. Souzangar said. “Human rights cannot be denied to my people.”

Write to David S. Cloud at [email protected] and Micah Maidenberg at [email protected]