Tehran says it can switch off Starlink terminals and will share the method with aligned states

Al Jazeera reported on 14 October that Aghamiri described Starlink as a “tool of war” for Iran’s enemies and said: “We have several systems for cutting off Starlink satellite terminals.” He did not describe the systems. He said one had been deployed during the nationwide protests in January and that Iran was prepared to share the technology with aligned countries. He urged Iranians onto domestic platforms carried by the National Information Network and endorsed a tiered-access model under which selected categories — traders, researchers, journalists — would retain access to international services while restrictions applied to everyone else. Possession and distribution of Starlink terminals is already illegal in Iran, with penalties ranging from fines and imprisonment to heavier sentences where national-security or espionage charges are brought. An internet and telecommunications expert in Tehran, speaking anonymously to Al Jazeera, described jamming and GPS spoofing among the methods used against Starlink connections; that account rests on a single unnamed source.

The remarks sit against two nationwide shutdowns already imposed on a country of some 90 million people this year, by Al Jazeera’s count: roughly three weeks during the January protests, and 88 days beginning with the US-Israeli strikes of 28 February. Separately, Iran International — a London-based Persian-language channel that is itself a standing target of Iranian state operations and has documented Saudi funding links — said on 15 October that an unauthorised third party had accessed the work account of one of its correspondents on 10 October. The outlet says the correspondent was approached by someone posing as a representative of “an established think tank” and invited to an online meeting whose link led to a fraudulent sign-in page. It says the account was secured “in a timely manner,” that no other account appears to have been compromised, and that the attacker had access to emails and files “including internal newsgathering and planning material and personal information about some colleagues and people we work with.” Its judgment that the attack came from “actors linked to the Iranian regime” is the outlet’s own; no vendor report, government statement or technical indicator has been published.

Assessment: Aghamiri’s tiered-access proposal is the part to watch, not the anti-Starlink boast. A shutdown with licensed exemptions for traders, researchers and journalists converts an emergency measure into permanent architecture, and creates a register of who is permitted to see the outside world — a more durable instrument of control than an 88-day blackout, and a cheaper one economically. The export offer to “aligned countries” is unverified and names no recipient; treat it as positioning until one appears. On Iran International, the five-day gap between compromise and disclosure is unexplained, and the attribution comes from a party to the conflict reporting on its own incident. That does not make it wrong. It does mean it stays a claim until an independent researcher corroborates it.