ON JANUARY 8, 2026, something unprecedented occurred in the annals of electronic warfare. Iran activated a multi-layered digital suppression campaign that, within hours, degraded Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service from functional connectivity to what engineers described as a "patchwork quilt" of intermittent access. According to Filter.Watch, an Iranian internet rights monitoring group, packet loss in Tehran surged from 30 per cent to over 80 per cent. This marked the first verified instance of a nation-state successfully neutralising Starlink at a national scale during an internal political crisis.

Iran has been the most-sanctioned country in the world, except for Russia after the start of the Ukraine War. The US, after unilaterally withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Trump’s 1st term, got its allies to impose snapback sanctions on Iran in late 2025, reverting to the harsh sanctions regime that existed before JCPOA. This led to the Iranian rial collapsing from 817,000 to the dollar to 1.42 million by late December 2025, a depreciation of over 73 per cent in less than 3 months. Food prices rose 72 per cent year-on-year. Annual inflation stood at 42.2 per cent. Shopkeepers in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, unable to price their goods amid daily currency volatility, shuttered their businesses in spontaneous protest. The issue is not whether Iranians had immediate reasons to demonstrate. The issue is what happened next: a coordinated attempt by US and Israeli intelligence agencies to hijack economic discontent into regime change, using satellite technology as a primary weapon, and its spectacular failure.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF SUBVERSION

Starlink terminals do not appear inside a sanctioned country by accident. They are costly physical devices that must be smuggled, distributed, hidden, powered, and activated. Estimates suggest between 50,000 and 100,000 terminals had been infiltrated into Iran by January 2026, enough to create a parallel communications network the moment Tehran switched off its internet.

There is the question of timing and logistics. The mass smuggling of Starlink terminals accelerated after President Biden authorised US technology companies to bypass sanctions in September 2022, coinciding with the Mahsa Amini protests. The infiltration intensified following the June 2025 twelve-day war between Iran and Israel, during which Musk announced Starlink's "beams are on" over Iran. Iranian authorities assert these "beams" were used by Israeli operatives to coordinate drone operations and airstrikes. By December 2025, a shadow network of satellite communications had been pre-positioned across the country, awaiting activation.

The foreign intelligence fingerprints became impossible to conceal. Mossad issued a public statement declaring, "We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field." Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also a former CIA director, posted on social media: "Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them." These are not coded messages. They are open acknowledgements of operational presence.

Certain Kurdish groups also joined the Israeli-US action plan. Seven Kurdish opposition groups, including the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an affiliate of the PKK designated as terrorist by Turkey, issued a joint call for a general strike on January 8. The Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) claimed armed attacks on IRGC positions in Kermanshah. Reuters reported that Turkey's intelligence agency, MIT, warned the IRGC about armed Kurdish fighters attempting to cross from Iraq and Turkey into Iran. Tehran claims these fighters were "dispatched" to exploit the unrest, and Turkey passed intelligence to prevent the infiltration.

The regime change playbook followed an established pattern. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz declared on December 29: "The people of Iran want freedom... We stand with Iranians in the streets." President Trump posted that "help is on its way". The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was presented with military strike options. By January 15, according to Axios, "dozens of top military, political and diplomatic officials in Washington and across the Middle East believed U.S. bombs would be dropping in Tehran within hours."

THE ELECTRONIC COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

Iran's response demonstrated that the Global South is no longer defenceless against imperial technological coercion. Iran’s jamming operation combined three distinct capabilities.

The foundation was GPS denial. Starlink terminals rely on GPS signals to locate themselves and establish satellite handoffs. By flooding the GPS L1 band with high-power interference, Iranian forces rendered terminals unable to calculate their positions, breaking connectivity without touching the satellites themselves.

The second layer was direct radiofrequency jamming. Iran deployed mobile jamming units capable of targeting Starlink's high-frequency Ku-band (10.9-14 GHz) and Ka-band (18-40 GHz) frequencies. According to Filter.Watch, these units moved from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, creating localised disruption zones. The pattern, analysts noted, "closely mirrors Russian jamming tactics used in Ukraine".

The third element was the Russian electronic warfare systems transferred to Iran over 2024-2025. Defence Security Asia confirmed the delivery of Krasukha-4 systems, truck-mounted broadband jammers with an effective range of 150-300 kilometres, capable of disrupting satellite communications across X/Ku/Ka bands used by Starlink. Iran also received the Murmansk-BN long-range EW system, which can jam communications up to 5,000 kilometres away. Iranian state media claims that specialists from Russia and China assisted in deploying these systems against Starlink.

The results were dramatic. Within 30 minutes of the January 8 shutdown, Cloudflare recorded a 98.5% collapse in Iranian internet traffic. Terrestrial connectivity dropped below 2% of normal levels. But crucially, Starlink, the supposed lifeline for protesters, was rendered largely inoperative precisely when it was needed most.

THE ABORTED STRIKE

The timing is telling. On January 15, the Trump administration appeared poised to order military strikes against Iran. US troops began evacuating from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Iran closed its airspace. But that afternoon, the order did not come. Trump announced that "very important sources on the other side" had informed him that the killing had stopped. The strike was called off.

What changed? The evidence suggests Iran's successful communications blackout disrupted the operational requirements of regime change. Without Starlink, the protest coordination infrastructure collapsed. Without continuous video of regime atrocities reaching global audiences in real-time, the propaganda machine lost fuel. Without the ability to communicate with agents and assets inside the country, intelligence operations were blinded. The much-vaunted colour revolution playbook, refined in Ukraine 2014, attempted in Belarus 2020, and partially executed in Iran 2022, had run into a technological wall.

Iranian authorities announced the dismantling of what they described as a "foreign espionage network." The IRGC arrested operatives accused of working for Mossad, claiming to have discovered weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making materials in safe houses. Videos broadcast by state media showed confiscated Starlink terminals still in original packaging, described as "electronic espionage and sabotage items" intended for distribution in protest areas.

The contrast with Ukraine is instructive. When Russia attempted to jam Starlink in 2022, SpaceX pushed software updates within hours that countered the interference. Elon Musk boasted of the company's adaptability. Yet in Iran, hastily pushed Starlink updates failed to revive internet service. Russian electronic warfare systems, developed through combat experience in Ukraine and Syria, have been transferred to Iran. Chinese expertise in satellite interference has also reportedly been shared. Iran had improved on those techniques and foiled the CIA-Mossad plans, showcasing its indigenous capabilities. The Global South is learning to fight back.

CONCLUSION

The impact of Iran's electronic warfare victory extends beyond the immediate crisis. The stranglehold that satellite technology promised to give imperial powers over information space has been broken at least partially, at least temporarily. SpaceX's constellation of 6,000 satellites, valued in the hundreds of billions, can be degraded by ground-based systems costing a fraction of that sum.

This is not a verdict on satellite technology, which holds genuine potential for global connectivity. It is a verdict on the imperial system that weaponises civilian infrastructure for regime change operations. When Musk declares "the beams are on" over a target country, when former CIA directors publicly acknowledge agents in protest crowds, when 50,000 smuggled terminals await activation, the humanitarian pretence collapses.

The implications extend beyond West Asia. For India, the lessons are stark. The Modi government has moved to issue licenses for Starlink to operate in India, breaking with the long-standing precedent that foreign firms cannot own telecom spectrum or operate telecom services directly. This reversal, pushed through without adequate public debate under US pressure, threatens our sovereignty. If satellite communications can be weaponised for regime change in Iran, they can be weaponised anywhere. The government must seriously reconsider these ill-thought-out moves before the "beams are on" over India.

For the architects of regime change in Washington and Tel Aviv, Iran represents a strategic setback. For the Global South, it represents a lesson: technological sovereignty is not optional. It is mandatory for preserving our sovereignty.