Posted on 02/07/2026 7:03:52 AM PST by daniel1212
In recent days, the news feed has been flooded with all kinds of headlines like “Starlink was shut down in Iran,” “The regime learned how to jam satellite internet,” “Starlink is broken,” and other similar nonsense. Naturally, many journalists and media outlets were happy to exploit clickbait headlines. As a result, many people perceived this narrative as an actually documented fact. Understandably… when such claims are published by well-known media, they surely cannot be false, right?
To begin with, a small historical excursus is needed, one that is absolutely essential for understanding the background of the situation. Satellite receivers have been prohibited by law in Iran since 1994. Therefore, everything that operates there does so illegally.
After the protests of 2022, Elon Musk wrote on X (then still Twitter): “Starlink is now activated in Iran.” Since then, the number of Starlink terminals in the country has been growing and, according to various estimates, has reached several tens of thousands.
...
In connection with the protests that began on December 28, 2025, the Iranian regime predictably decided to “flip the internet kill switch.” A classic and complete national telecom shutdown took place. The Internet, mobile networks, providers, international links — all of it went down...On January 8, 2026,...national internet traffic dropped to 1% of its normal level
... The first to report potential problems with Starlink was Amir Rashidi — Director of Digital Rights at the Miaan Group, an expert on the Iranian internet. His statements about “80% packet loss”...Rashidi interprets the problem as “something beyond GPS jamming” (likely mobile jammers, similar to those used by Russia in the war against Ukraine).
A translation of NasNet’s tweet from Persian contains an interesting statement:“Thanks to cooperation with the Starlink technical team, the situation with interference and packet loss in Tehran has significantly improved and decreased from approximately 35% to approximately 10%.”...
... Is it even possible to suppress Starlink at all?...
It was Russian anti-satellite electronic warfare systems that for many years were used as a scarecrow even by far-from-pro-Russian media. But reality turned out to be different ...That is, even when some degree of success was achieved, SatCom industry engineers always found effective countermeasures, and even partial success quickly became a closed chapter. Starlink was no exception....
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Synopsis: The stories of mass killings by the Iranian government were completely unsupported and part of an array of manufactured narrative including loss of Starlink — which never happened.
Believe nothing.
And when confronted with a reality that you cannot believe anything, don’t then surrender to believing the stories (that are not believable) that wallow in echo chambers.
And when confronted with a reality that you cannot believe anything, don’t then surrender to believing the stories (that are not believable) that wallow in echo chambers.
Perhaps you can explain the jump from Starlink to mass killings?
I watch Tousi TV who receives daily videos uploaded via Starlink from all parts of Iran. This story explains why there were fluctuations in the amount of videos being sent out since the internet was shut down over the last month. Thanks for this article.
Amid the talk of mass killings and challenges to that, the talk retreated to the sanctuary of “we would have total proof if only Iran had not shut off Starlink”.
Thank you for the reply. As I have often re-stated, the first casualty of war is truth.
All sides engage in information warfare, or they are incompetent.
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