Tehran says it disrupted 80 percent of Starlink traffic, and summons Norway’s ambassador

Seyyed Mohammad Amin Aghamiri, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace and head of the National Cyberspace Center, said on 13 October that Iran has designed and tested systems to identify, manage and disrupt satellite terminals, and that “Starlink technology can be countered through technical means.” He put the figure at roughly 80 percent of Starlink communication packets disrupted during the December unrest, with much of the remainder rendered largely ineffective, and said a network assessment conducted in March would be followed by a new evaluation. The claim was carried by WANA and by Tehran Times, both Iranian state or state-aligned, and rests on a single official. No methodology was disclosed, no definition of a disrupted packet was offered, and no independent measurement — NetBlocks, Cloudflare Radar, IODA or Starlink itself — has tested it.

Tehran Times drew a distinction worth keeping: technical interference degrades a link and Iran can attempt it alone, while remote deactivation requires the operator to locate and disable the terminal, which Iran cannot do. That is why the second track is diplomatic. Iran protested formally to Norway in October over what it called continued failure to act against unauthorised Starlink operations, and the Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Paul Bjornstad to demand immediate measures halting transmissions. Starlink is internationally registered via Norway, which is why Oslo rather than Washington is the addressee. The dispute has sat with the ITU Radio Regulations Board since March 2023; at its 101st meeting in March 2026 the Board concluded Norway’s actions were not compliant. Earlier measured figures are older: NetBlocks recorded roughly 1 percent of normal connectivity during the wartime blackout in March 2026.

Assessment: The 80 percent figure is doing political work at home — it tells Iranians that the exit is closed — and should be read as deterrent messaging first, capability disclosure second. The consequential item is the Norwegian summons. Tehran is attempting to convert a domestic censorship problem into an international spectrum-regulation obligation, and the ITU Board has already found against Oslo once. If that track advances, the precedent reaches well beyond Iran: any state could press a satellite operator’s registering country to switch off terminals inside its borders. Note what Iran has not repeated this week. Aghamiri’s 5 October remark to Iran International raising satellite infrastructure as a potential military target is nine days old and has not been restated.