Iran is likely jamming Starlink

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-appears-to-jam-starlink-after-shutting-down-comms-networks/

by ukblewis • 6 months ago

144 263 6 months ago

ggm2• 6 months ago

Under packetloss my assumption is text is king, but I wonder if forward error correcting audio and video is actually better in some ways?

Media is information rich. Maybe we're beyond a samzdat moment and the value in comms is contextual immediacy of live feeds, text can squeeze alongside.

Long ago, broadcast quality TV was shipped as slow feed. Maybe a tiktok generation goes back there: use a phone on the street (probably surreptitiously) do post production and upload asynchronously on 30% packetloss or worse for redistribution.

bawolff6• 6 months ago

You are acting like people dont upload videos anymore.

The people filming protests in iran are probably not in range of their home starlink connected wifi. They are almost certainly filming stuff offline then uploading it later, not livestreaming.

ggm2• 6 months ago

Yes. thats broadly what I think people will be doing. My concern was, under 30% to 80% packetloss, how well this works. I think the answer is, if you want to get media out, it works well enough, given enough time.

I would be surprised if GPS blocking is enough to completely can starlink. It improves positioning but if you don't jog the antenna, given these things are in predictable orbit, you can probably get good-enough S/N without GPS info.

tkel• 6 months ago

Which governments are referred to as "regimes" is usually propaganda about how you should feel about them. Consider: all articles written about US using the words "The US regime".

IlIlIlIIlIlIlI• 6 months ago

Yes, a "regime" is basically a country where they wants to have control but can't for some reason

epistasis2• 6 months ago

I don't think I've ever read an article using the term "US regime," as that usually refers to an undemocratic or authoritarian government. You might want to clean up your information diet if you're reading lots of articles over the years with that term...

Yes it is a value judgement, but Iran's government is nothing if not oppressive and authoritarian. Until recently the US had taken pride in being nothing like a regime, but that may change in the coming years.

bulbar• 6 months ago

Until recently the US had taken pride in being nothing like a regime, but that may change in the coming years.

I tend to believe the US is already past that point. It's just people are not really realizing that yet. Might take the next election for them to realize. That will be to late however.

I hope so much that this is wrong and the US turns out to be more resilient than it looks like from the outside though.

ThePowerOfFuet• 6 months ago

I don't think I've ever read an article using the term "US regime," as that usually refers to an undemocratic or authoritarian government.

Pretty fuckin' big rock you've been living under for the last couple years.

jjk166• 6 months ago

Regime refers to who holds power in a nation. It encompasses power holders in both formal and informal institutions which span beyond just the government. The major distinction is democratic versus autocratic regimes, with regime on its own referring specifically to the autocratic version. There are plenty of autocratic regimes which we (assuming everyone on the internet is American or at least from the West) are friendly with, like Jordan's.

stein1946• 6 months ago

How likely is it that those "protestors" are US and Israel propped and the plan is to do another regime change via this route?

Isn't this "son of the late Shah" a guy from the US?

Mikhail_Edoshin3• 6 months ago

It is 100% that.

flanked-evergl• 6 months ago

...

lmm• 6 months ago

I guess the people Israel is murdering on a massive scale are generally noncitizens, but it's still not really in a position to throw stones.

jeltz• 6 months ago

Very, but at the same time the Iranian leadership have been a really shitty government and ran the country into the gutter. People have genuine grievances.

HauntingPin2• 6 months ago

The only way to believe this is if you're a Westerner being fed a purely US-centric media diet. Otherwise you'd know all the ways that the Iranian government has been failing their people recently and for a long time now, and how unhappy Iranians are with their government. You people act like people can't be upset at how they're being treated by their own government without being incited by an external actor. That's honestly quite the dehumanising and insulting way of looking at it.

Also, if the US wanted to do a regime change, they'd just move in militarily a la Venezuela and Trump would be talking about it non-stop. He's not the subtle type, I promise. We'd already know if they were involved.

xg15• 6 months ago

I mean, Trump is talking about Iran nonstop.

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2026-01-10/ty-artic...

pyrale• 6 months ago

How likely is it that those "protestors" are US and Israel propped

It's almost sure that both US and Israel are meddling with the current situation. That doesn't mean the situation isn't also started by and wanted by the population.

For a comparison point in the past, the civil rights and antiwar movements in the US were grass-roots movements started by local people with legitimate claims. At the same time, opponents of the US like USSR were involved in stirring these movements, because of course they would.

There isn't much you can infer about the legitimacy of a movement by learning that the movement is helped by foreign intelligence agencies.

The best way you can avoid this kind of confusion is 1) make a society in which malicious actors don't have many latent issues to stir, and 2) make it so your country's intelligence agencies aren't malicious actors. There isn't much else to do.

bawolff6• 6 months ago

Iran has a water crisis, and allegedly the economic situation is so bad that people are starting to wonder if it will soon affect their ability to buy food.

Even the Romans knew that if you wanted to stay in power you had to provide bread and circuses.

Mikhail_Edoshin3• 6 months ago

Starlink is primarily a military technology that is used both on a battlefield and to coordinate USA-backed "protests". Why, for instance, it just become free in Venezuela? Every country needs to be able to to defend itself from Starlink.

CamperBob22• 6 months ago

Every country needs to be able to defend itself from Russia, too, apparently.

Mikhail_Edoshin3• 6 months ago

No, only US-backed puppets that US uses against Russia. For example, Russia has very good relations with Belorussia where the government wasn't lured into this role and did not let US to overthrow it.

DANmode• 6 months ago

What’s wrong with that end-result?

Way worse outcomes.

librasteve• 6 months ago

mobile phones are primarily a military technology

lazyeye• 6 months ago

What an insane take.

jonway• 6 months ago

Wow this sucks! however if i were iranian brass i would do it too. IT/OT and IoT is not safe full stop. Pull the plug. It wouldnt be pretty over here either, also china already got us good (Volt Typhoon, OPM hack, why bother to list 30 or 40 more?)

bawolff6• 6 months ago

The article seems quite speculative.

I'm sure the Iranian regime would live to jam starlink, but i don't think we have any ability to know what is actually happening here.

The article claims 80% packetloss. That's still 1 in 5 packets getting through. That is annoying but not going to stop information getting out.

I also wonder, if all other coms are cut off, is it possible star link in the country is just overloaded?

XorNot• 6 months ago

In my experience 80% packet loss makes most common protocols basically unusable. Yes you can still get data out...but many apps will just fail due to timeouts and other things.

bawolff6• 6 months ago

I imagine the people with illegal starlink terminals are fairly tech savy and can use custom protocols. Living in Iran they probably already have a lot of experience with vpns and lower level protocols to evade censorship.

p-e-w• 6 months ago

Matrix published a proof of concept a few years ago of an alternative transport layer designed to work over connections with a few hundred bits per second, and massive packet loss, while still providing E2EE:

https://matrix.org/blog/2019/03/12/breaking-the-100bps-barri...

dlenski• 6 months ago

How do these tens of thousands of Starlink terminals get smuggled into Iran?

aaomidi2• 6 months ago

Iran has a thriving black market through its borders

HDThoreaun• 6 months ago

Trucks I assume

Yaser_Amiri• 6 months ago

Iran has a huge black market. Many things from refrigerator to small things are being smuggled to Iran, mostly from the mountains on Iraq border (also from Turkey border and from other Gulf countries. The government is not peaky about smuggling since Iran is under heavy sanctions and it's hard for the government to provide USD to legit traders on official channels.

ACCount374• 6 months ago

Not too surprising, given that Starlink operates in Iran without a permit, "space pirate radio" style, and has something of a habit of making the access free when major protests happen and the government imposes a network blackout. Iranian government and Starlink have no love for each other, clearly.

It's a pattern by now: whenever a government wants to do something awful, it shuts down internet access - so that no one can hear it, see it or coordinate a response. And Starlink becomes a lifeline that the regime would rather people didn't have.

This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place. If you give a government a capability to restrict access to whatever it wants and enact a network blackout whenever it wants, it's a matter of time until it gets abused.

ece6• 6 months ago

It's weird how Apple and Google don't get it, while SpaceX does.

ACCount374• 6 months ago

Starlink isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't go for "it's so not our problem, we'll just make sure that every single VPN exit point Iranians use is GeoIP'd as Iran in our systems" like Google tends to, or "let's lick every authoritarian boot, we control the app distribution and our users will suck it up" like Apple does.

Not even Starlink has the balls to oppose the likes of Russia and China directly - they aren't operating there without a permit, sadly. But at least they don't kneel before every two-bit dictatorship and cave to every single "we want you to do censorship on our behalf" demand. Way better than what most tech companies do now.

dzhiurgis• 6 months ago

Imagine if Starlink came with special channel to X.com. UK would loose their minds.

freefaler• 6 months ago

They "operate" in Iran because of OFAC issues general licenses under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 560) permitting non-commercial personal communications, including satellite internet for free expression. Starlink activation in 2022 protests and recent events exploited these, as Musk sought formal exemptions for "internet freedom."

And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)

tmaly• 6 months ago

It has to be free in case of OFAC sanctions otherwise if you are generating revenue from commercial activity in sanctioned regions, you get huge fines.

immibis2• 6 months ago

The reason national great firewalls shouldn't exist, is that national great firewalls are bad. We don't have to blame potential future badness when we can blame definite present badness.

kennykartman11• 6 months ago

Playing a bit the devil's advocate here, but

This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place

This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.

skandinaff• 6 months ago

But wouldn't the position of a strong government be to trust it's people, and allow them to see the whole spectrum of information available in the world, and give them essentially the right to decide what's "right or wrong"? I don't see how being free from any information filtering on behalf of some benevolent leader is USA-centric?

liamwire• 6 months ago

It takes an incredible stretch of the imagination to conflate colonialism with freedom, when the two couldn't be more at odds, definitionally.

ushtaritk421• 6 months ago

Yes, as an American I think that all forms of government that are not liberal democracy basically are illegitimate. We can have relationships of convenience with other governments, but it should be known by such governments somewhere in the back of their minds that we would prefer to see them replaced by a liberal democracy.

The Iranian state has not shown itself to be one that is very convenient for us to temporarily overlook its flaws, and the people it governs frequently show that they would prefer a different form of government (otherwise, why not let them vote in fair elections?). It should be a no brainer that Americans and their government should be on the side of the people, not the theocracy.

lee_ars• 6 months ago

There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle.

Why?

JumpCrisscross3• 6 months ago

colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society

Iran has commanded empires for millennia. Longer than continental Europe.

Iranians getting their hands on Starlink terminals is as “colonial” as revolutionary France helping the American colonists usurp the British.

derbOac• 6 months ago

I'm genuinely a bit confused — it seems like you're arguing that people should be able to have freedom to choose what to do, but not?

hartator• 6 months ago

I candidly thought it wasn’t possible to block Starlink.

I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.

jeroenhd• 6 months ago

If it were impossible, China would've had reason to blow up their satellites in orbit. The US would do the same thing for Chinese satellite ISPs.

Jamming on such a large scale is expensive, but it's hardly impossible.

gordonhart• 6 months ago

There’s no evidence that China (or anybody else) has the capacity to meaningfully harm the 9000+ satellite Starlink constellation.

NitpickLawyer• 6 months ago

The title is wrong, as usual. This is a re-hash of earlier reports. Starlink is getting 30-80% packet loss, depending on where they're using it. Likely local jammers. But it still gets through.

iberator• 6 months ago

Jamming or hijacking geostationary satellites signal is trivial for literally a team of 3 hm radio veterans with 10+ years of experience.

Jamming RF is easy in general. Nowadays we can even do beamforming so i guess it would be trivial.

snickerbockers• 6 months ago

There's a difference between possible and plausible. In the most absurd case, it was always a given that a sufficiently large faraday cage or a literal iron dome would block starlink from reaching anybody in iran therefore it was never thought to be impossible to block starlink. At best it's implausible but that would refer specifically to the construction of the giant faraday cage and the literal iron dome, not the concept of blocking starlink.

DivingForGold• 6 months ago

The Russians have developed rather efficient GPS jamming equip., as we know, Iranian Gov't is partners with Russians, providing drone technology, so no great mystery where likely the jammers originated from.

redwall_hp• 6 months ago

Any satellite signal is going to be relatively weak compared to what you can produce on the ground. Inverse square law, and power limitations of a mobile transmitter.

It's fairly trivial to set up a transmitter that saturates a slice of spectrum at an amount of power that is ridiculous compared to a satellite signal. There are still AM radio stations operating that go as high as 50kW. The satellite transmitters aren't going to exceed maybe a hundred Watts, at a great distance, and that falls off at 1/(distance)^2.

curiousObject• 6 months ago

Is this not only a side effect of Iran doing widespread GPS and GNSS jamming or spoofing?

consumer4512• 6 months ago

I am curious if there are any implications for the Russian invasion of Ukraine from this tactic working.

GrowingSideways2• 6 months ago

Both sides are using starlink, yes?

Also there's now guowang to contend with. I'm not sure how widely available access to it is.

I would assume both sides are heavily jamming the frontlines. But presumably long range drone operations are more likely to use it.

throwaway858252• 6 months ago

Jamming is subject to the inverse square law.

Etheryte• 6 months ago

What do you mean, Russia has been doing the same thing for most of the war? The success relies on you controlling the territory, or at least territory close enough, so the results vary.

krona• 6 months ago

Isn't Iran doing this from the air? That would be far more effective. In a contested space with AA everywhere that wouldn't be feasible (i.e. large parts of Ukraine)

SXX2• 6 months ago

In a war zone any large high power jammer will be like supernova in the darkness visible for detectors from tens of kilometers away. So its gonna be immediately destroyed.

Iran protesters cant find or destroy jammers though.

consumer4512• 6 months ago

What do you mean...

I am an RF ignoramus. It all seems like black magic to me. I have seen "80% packet loss" being thrown around in these discussions, and also that it is just GPS spoofing.

My main question is that is there anything novel happening here? What is the actual range of disruption?

general1465• 6 months ago

I don't think it will have much implication. Jamming is a two way street. You can erase some spectrums, but you are also creating massive electromagnetic beacon for home-on-jam ammunition.

However if you are a protester without any advanced weapons, then you can't do anything against that.

perihelions• 6 months ago

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this?

"But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

archerx2• 6 months ago

If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran able to disrupt the GPS signals?

BoardsOfCanada• 6 months ago

By jamming the receivers on the ground

Neywiny3• 6 months ago

For legal reasons I base this off of nothing but just turn your jammer to the sky. Could get fancy and point out directly at the satellites since my understanding is it's pretty easy to know where they are.

Edit to add: I do not mean the GPS satellites or the starlink ground terminals. That was not the question so that is not my answer. I mean the starlink satellites

Majromax2• 6 months ago

GPS signals are extremely weak, and they're necessarily received from omnidirectional antennas that can't provide much antenna gain. In some sense it's a miracle of signal processing that GPS can ever be received.

Majromax2• 6 months ago

It sounds like Starlink uses GPS to localize the receiver, rather than for any active step in the communication link. Since most receivers are static, I wonder if an effective workaround to this is for the receiver to just remember its last GPS fix for longer, or worst-case allow a manual location specification in lieu of a GPS fix.

ovi256• 6 months ago

A user provided location cannot be trusted for geofencing purposes. A GNSS (GPS or other) is needed sooner or later. This is a legal requirement for sanction and regulation enforcement (US, if not others).

gomijacogeo• 6 months ago

Assuming the jamming is coming from close to the horizon, I wonder if one could improvise a choke ring around the antenna with some sheet metal or foil.

bri3d• 6 months ago

This isn’t even true; Starlink can use the local starlink constellation for positioning and the option is available in the customer facing configuration specifically for GPS denied areas (since about two years ago), where it’s been used for ages.

Something else is going on here - perhaps there’s an edge case where Starlink can be made to perform poorly without falling back away from GPS, but I wouldn’t expect this since it’s been “tested” in the most GPS hostile places for quite some time now.

stereo• 6 months ago

Gps is free to use. Running your own gnss service requires an atomic clock and possibly separate transmission hardware, which is possible, but adds cost, volume, and weight.

According to [1], “[o]ne of the current generation of GPS satellites (Block III) weighs over 2,200 kg (4,850 lb), the weight of an average pickup truck. The body of these satellites are 1.8 m x 2.5 m x 3.4 m (5.9’ x 8.2’ x 11.2’) in size”. In comparison, “the current V2 Starlink satellite version weighs approximately 1,760 lbs (800 kilograms) at launch, almost three times heavier than the older generation satellites (weighing in at 573 lbs or 260 kg)” [2]

[1] https://novatel.com/an-introduction-to-gnss/basic-concepts/s... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

Imustaskforhelp5• 6 months ago

Gps is free to use. Running your own gnss service requires an atomic clock and possibly separate transmission hardware, which is possible, but adds cost, volume, and weight.

Thanks you provide some great insights on why starlink didnt use gps but still if starlink wants to focus itself as the uncensorable internet in places like protests etc. I feel like they can probably do this after this recent incident

I just can't feel but sad right now because starlink was still providing activists ways to report outside and that helped protestors a lot and information. Now even starlink got removed because starlink tried to save money and I think might not have thought about what if gps itself gets blocked.

This is giving very bad signals for Iran. Is there any way now that Protestors are able to communicate to the outside world/ activists be able to report data outside?

tucnak2• 6 months ago

GPS comparison is moot in this case, as there's no need for Starlink constellations to provide full GNSS capability, just locating the satellites precisely enough to facilitate beamforming.

mikewarot• 6 months ago

Chip scale atomic clocks are quite small[1], have been used in space, and could be part of the existing Starlink satellites. Finding reliable details about the orbital vehicles the internet eludes me.

[1] https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/F...

throwaway858252• 6 months ago

A CRPA should still work.

testing22321• 6 months ago

Musk tweeted a while back that the constellation could be used as its own GPS service, but it wasn’t a priority right now. Maybe later.

Noaidi• 6 months ago

This whole stalink for military use (Starshield) was a scam Elon sold the military from the beginning. Just like his dumb ass tunnels and his self driving cars. He is putting the military at risk.

nradov• 6 months ago

Is there any actual evidence that Starshield doesn't work substantially as promised?

almogo2• 6 months ago

Does anyone know how Iranians are _actually_ communicating right now? I remember seeing here on HN (admittedly a long time ago) some Bluetooth-mesh technologies that promised decentralized solutions to these very type of problems

Imustaskforhelp5• 6 months ago

I think IPv4 services are still present no?

So like they are very heavily DPI censored though and maybe govts able to spy on any messages you send right now but I feel like there is a still possibility that for the average communication, they might still exist but although heavily heavily censored/bad and I feel like protestors might not be able to communicate (which I feel like is the question you meant to be asking)

https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/ir

So TLDR: protestors must have a hard time sadly and they may be using bluetooth mesh or other tech, only they can tell after we figure things out but also lets say some major services websites might still exist after all if they bypass the dpi censorship for IPv4 services.

In my opinion, I feel like Protestors must be using mesh based technologies as you mention. We'll see what really ends up happening after we get some reports from Iran.

tucnak2• 6 months ago

It is said they pulled the plug for all peering on Thursday, although I would assume some kind of government-run ISP may be operational still (I haven't checked Cloudlfare radar)

simonmales• 6 months ago

You might be referring to Bitchat.

westurner2• 6 months ago

https://github.com/x011/smtp-tunnel-proxy :

A high-speed covert tunnel that disguises TCP traffic as SMTP email communication to bypass Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) firewalls

petcat• 6 months ago

It seems like these smuggle-disguise protocols are almost always trivially detectable.

DetectDefect• 6 months ago

No mention of any security review, or even testing. Reason enough to stay away from such tools.

BurningFrog2• 6 months ago

The only working communication I see mentioned on X is Starlink.

RickJWagner2• 6 months ago

I saw a comment yesterday from a user claiming to be in Iran. I think he said StarLink was usable. ( Maybe that’s changed, though. )

_DeadFred_• 6 months ago

Maybe better for an after the brutal theocratic regime crackdown discussion?

embedding-shape2• 6 months ago

Funny considering the top comment from the two-day old "Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542683):

Fortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it to no avail.

Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.

Imustaskforhelp5• 6 months ago

I wouldn't consider it funny though when you realize the gravitas of the situation though but yea.

I just wanted to point out that it felt rude to call it funny but I understand what you mean and what intention but please be more sincere about such issues.

Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.

Someone mentions that there is a huge packet loss but its still possible. Other mentions that its possible to do this in rural villages and there are many nuances. I genuinely dont know the technological reasons or know how of what it is or what the ground state of reality is and what's actually happening but I hope that starlink still works or can have a work-around for the activists. We will see in sometime what really happens in the ground state as I must admit I still don't know if its 100% censored or what the reality is.

embedding-shape2• 6 months ago

The situation as a whole is in no way funny, sorry I gave you that impression. What is funny to me, is a confidently incorrect comment from a related story just two days ago that also ended up the highest upvoted one, which quickly seemed to have been proven wrong. This is still funny to me, yet the situation itself remains helplessly depressing.

falaki2• 6 months ago

I left the comment on starlink on that thread. I should note some personal observations as I am in touch with a few folks inside Iran through Starlink.

1. The jamming/disruption is local to large cities most notably the capital, Tehran

2. Even in Tehran it is not complete and my friends are able to send and receive messages. Uploading videos is harder.

3. The regime is now raiding homes that they suspect have Starlink terminals. I don't know how they identify them but I do wonder if they are using technology to locate them.

malchow• 6 months ago

Satellite signals are just weak RF signals and can be disrupted easily. There is nothing 'hardened' about them. It's funny that people think Starlink or any of its many incipient competitors are any different.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

But it's in extremely difficult to disrupt the signals across the whole country? I person go go out with a battery and setup a starlink terminal in the middle of nowhere in 2 minutes (exactly how I'm writing this post right now from Boliva)

notahacker• 6 months ago

If your objective is to stop or at least slow coordination of protests and flow of information about things the regime is doing in the major cities of Tehran and Mashhad, you're a lot less worried that plenty of rural villages get completely unhindered signals, if anyone in them happens to have a Starlink terminal.

dalben• 6 months ago

10W is enough to block GPS signals in a 15-30km radius. The signals are below the noise floor and easy to disrupt.

Geee2• 6 months ago

Starlink uses beamforming with directional antenna arrays, so it should be rather difficult to jam compared to omnidirectional antennas. It's basically a dish pointed at the satellite, so the jammer should be in between to work.

Antenna arrays aren't perfect so it still picks up some energy omnidirectionally, but it should be possible to shield it with some metal plates in a way that only sky is visible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

touisteur• 6 months ago

I think, to beamform in the right direction you have to be able to locate yourself precisely, have an up-to-date almanach of the satellites, and a precise enough datation source. Jamming GNSS is a source of problems for 2 of those issues.

Also, the antennas on starlink dishes are still pretty small, likely to pick up some hard-to-remove sidelobes and the tech to cancel them properly might be export-controlled. You still need to be within electromagnetic visibility to jam them, though.

overfeed3• 6 months ago

basically a dish pointed at the satellite, so the jammer should be in between to work.

Which isn't hard to do if you have the budget of a government. Directional antennae, GPS and a helicopter/Cessna flying patterns over a metro. Beams from the terminal are constantly scanning the sky chasing the constellations.

A higher hit rate option would be a fleet of low altitude drones taking high-res pictures of the ground, and running a fine-tuned classifier to identify Starlink Dishies which require a clear line of sight to the sky.

People who think Starlink is unblockable, or somehow anonymous IRL are unimaginative. Iran is well-versed enough with electronic warfare that it tricked a RQ-170 Sentinel land on it's territory - how hardened are Starlink terminals against responding to a spoofed signal and exposing their locations?

tim3333• 6 months ago

Russia seems to have been ineffective at stopping the Ukranians using it.

stevenwoo• 6 months ago

There are multiple photos of Russian drones using Starlink terminals, so they would be blocking their own use of it.

bigbadfeline• 6 months ago

Russia seems to have been ineffective at stopping the Ukranians using it.

Russia isn't in control of Ukrainian territory, where the starlink terminals are, which would be the prime targets of any disruption operation. The situations in Iran and Ukraine are materially different.

suburban_strike• 6 months ago

Optical links to ground stations are the future, if they can mitigate atmospheric interference. Laser is harder to jam.

Old article about Starlink (see bottom of page). Competitors have similar solutions in development.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90681156/elon-musk-starlink-sate...

anovikov• 6 months ago

I am wondering if Starlink users can't compensate for it themselves by transmitting a GPS signal using some SDR device locally, just putting in correct coordinates from Google Maps into it? GPS signals are at 1.5GHz which is easily accessible for cheap SDRs.

But really, why doesn't Starlink device allow to simply enter coordinates manually? After all, if someone enters wrong coordinates (say to enable operation in a place where Starlink has no service), it won't work because it won't find satellites where it expects them to be.

Or is there something here that i'm missing?

DoctorOetker• 6 months ago

I don't own a starlink dish, but I assume one can log in and configure some things. It would be a nobrainer to have a way to enter coordinates and system time. Also the manual could have sane advice like recommendation to use "peace time" to establish the locations GPS coordinates and write them down on some sticker or so.

If it can serve a basic web page with a world map, it may be justifiable to include it for the price of the dish (yes will require some flash storage).

paganel4• 6 months ago

Good for them, as they’re under external attack. For example a US ghoul like Mike Pompeo had this to say recently [1]:

Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them

so under those circumstances anything goes to defeat the likes of Mossad and associated foreign entities doing their thing on Iranian soil.

[1] https://xcancel.com/mikepompeo/status/2007180411638620659

scythe• 6 months ago

I think this is a major unforced error by the USG, of course we have seen plenty of those of late. There may be Israeli, American or other intelligence agencies present. But history has shown that spies can't just foment a revolution out of thin air. The Americans' first attempt at a coup in Chile, in 1970, failed. It was only after three years of US machinations and missteps by the Allende administration that Pinochet arose — Pinochet was given his fateful promotion by Allende himself! And that was in a "friendly" country where the US had many connections.

Iranians wouldn't be on the streets right now if the government had listened to its own water engineers over the years. But the new political culture in our government is more interested in braggadocio than achieving real change. I doubt that if the protesters succeed that Iran would become friendly to the West. At the same time there is probably a not too contrived worry among the Iranians that Netanyahu will seize the opportunity to attack if a political transition occurs. Bluster like this only hurts the cause.

macintux• 6 months ago

I have to imagine the protests would stop immediately if Iran is attacked by Israel or the U.S. You can be angry at your government while not welcoming bombers.

Ordinarily I'd have faith the governments were smart enough to know better, but at this point I've lost hope.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Iranians are living under Islamic colonial dictatorship. Blaming this unrest on Israeli and US influence is absurd. And only exposes you as a sympathizer to the oppressive regime.

paganel4• 6 months ago

You're saying that the Brits should throw their colonizer and Christian king out of the island and return to their old Celtic traditions and deities, no? Or what exactly? Because the timeframes are very comparable, Saint Colombanus died in the early 600s, while the Arabs got all the way to Merv by the 670s-680s.

tim3333• 6 months ago

Is them the Iranian people or their dictators?

ck2• 6 months ago

I am curious how phones now can reach LEO for enough bandwidth for voice calls but you need a full dish, however small, for starlink?

Could you get at least 1mbps from a phone to LEO now for email and non-realtime data?

bearjaws• 6 months ago

You pretty much nailed it, its all about bandwidth.

The emergency SOS feature is optimized down to the byte to ensure it can work with poor signal and low bandwidth.

ACCount374• 6 months ago

Link budget cuts both ways. If your user terminal sucks, you can compensate somewhat - by building a larger, beefier satellite that has better antenna directionality and pumps out more transmission juice, and throwing the data rate under the bus. This is how it's done now.

Having a terminal that doesn't suck puts less strain on the satellite side and, thus, scales better. But for emergencies and serving middle of nowhere, "direct to cell" makes sense.

dsign• 6 months ago

My thoughts to the Iranian people, may they get what they need and deserve at a cost that is not too high.

As in all conflicts, there's always a "fog of blame" where there isn't absolute certainty about who is right and who is to blame. Though it's not that hard. Because their survival depends on it, dictators are very good at blaming others--anybody, really--for their own shortcomings, and they usually wield the kind of hard power that makes them extremely costly to topple in terms of suffering and human lives.

Life is too short to have to deal with despots. We need a better, perhaps less-crowded or less xenophobic world where every person can protect their right to exist by simply packing and leaving as a last resort.

CamperBob22• 6 months ago

Agreed, but right now, I'm getting Bay of Pigs vibes from the whole affair. Trump baits the protestors into action -- don't worry, we've got your backs! -- and then hangs them out to dry.

energy123• 6 months ago

A politicide is occuring right now in Iran.

BurningFrog2• 6 months ago

[flagged]

noman-land• 6 months ago

I publicly beg people not to do this.

Sharing anything but the prompt you wrote is useless and arguably harmful.

smilesvua• 6 months ago

HAM Radio still works

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Why are none of the people I saw posting non-stop about Palestine saying anything about Iranian freedom? Would honestly love to hear a genuine response from anyone who is against the movement in Iran. Or even conflicted about it.

seanmcdirmid• 6 months ago

I’m not against the movement, but the last time Iran had protests this bad was in 1979. It didn’t get better afterwards. It’s a huge mess and I hope they figure something out to fix it, but I’m just pessimistic.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Thanks for the reply. Makes sense.

tekla• 6 months ago

I hope the movement succeeds.

I've been curious myself about why the activist class seems weirdly quiet on this issue.

On a quick scan of media feeds I've seen a couple of things that stand out (I do not confirm or deny how true these claims are)

1) Current Iran is a enemy of the USA and thus activists can't support the destruction of the current regime. Iran is able to create nukes so can put pressure on the USA in Middle East Politics (esp. Palestine and Israel)

2) The uprising and the Shah are CIA/Western Backed and thus supporting the protestors is de-facto colonialism/imperialism.

3) Contrary to popular belief Iran is not actually a Muslim nation, only the leadership is. The population is significantly more varied and people do not want to be seen supporting the firebombing of Mosques because Islamphobia.

I don't know how widespread these opinions are, but it IS very strange how I don't see more outrage.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

I think the left-leaning activist people in the Americas are so against any position that could align with a Trump position, that they can’t think beyond those lines. If Trump supports the revolution it must be bad.

baggy_trough• 6 months ago

The core of far left activism is being anti-Western. Therefore, they can't say anything bad about even the most despicable anti-Western governments.

breppp• 6 months ago

There's an alliance between the new left and islamism due to some ideological similarities.

Sure one side would march for pride and the other hangs gays on cranes.

However, in foreign policy both explain anything as some product of colonialism, a phenomena that essentially disappeared 60 years ago.

This is due to the effect Edward Said had on US humanities, which was in turn was influenced by Muslim Brotherhood thought in his home country of Egypt

danny_codes• 6 months ago

I offer two possibilities:

1. Iran has frequent large protests that consistently get crushed. So while I assume the vast majority of Americans oppose the Iranian government, it’s hard to get worked up for the 5th, 6th time.

2. The US doesn’t support the Iranian government. We already sanction them. What additional support can US citizens lobby for? In the case of Israel, decreased US support would have a tangible effect. Unclear how increased US support for Iranian protestors would matter.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Makes sense!

oldandboring6• 6 months ago

The US doesn’t support the Iranian government.

The US does support the Saudi government, though, and the collective response from the concerned citizens brigade about their relentless 10+ year pulverization of Yemen has been... nothing.

DesiLurker• 6 months ago

I have a less charitable and more direct answer. Right now there is a notion in Left that Israeli are the oppressor. In Iran large majority of population is Persian but MINO (Muslim in name only due to dictatorship). They are struggling to get freedom from the Islamic regime and getting some help from Israel. This flips the narrative in Left's mind (if they accept it) that Muslims can be oppressors too and that is untenable for them. especially because Left in Western nations has basically aligned themselves with muslims so its easier for them to just ignore it.

BTW its not just left here, I originally hail from India and you can feel the pin-drop silence from left on Iran there too. They just hope the rebellion gets crushed by regime like other ones and they'll pretend status quo.

My TLDR takeaway: Muslims only care about when they are oppressed & Left is completely aligned with them right now.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

I completely agree with you.

omgmajk• 6 months ago

In certain subreddits I have seen the idea that there is no revolution, it's all mossad/CIA propaganda. It's quite conspiratorial but it's the same subs that typically love China, NK etc so it's not surprising.

However, I have seen these thoughts spread to more seemingly mainstream geopolitical subs as well. I am not sure how much astroturfing is going on here. Probably quite a lot.

whatshisface• 6 months ago

There are a lot of signs that the leader being suggested would be a king, which is not something most citizens in democratic nations would feel natural fighting for.

TiredOfLife• 6 months ago

Because the Iranian regime was the one pushing that pro Palestine narrative.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Yup. Hard to be pro Hamas and then cheer a secular revolution in Iran.

almogo2• 6 months ago

Speaking from an American perspective, many left-leaning commentators I've seen are focused on the ICE situation in the states right now.

But that's the most optimistic take I can conjure.

Rover22214• 6 months ago

Definitely part of it. But the Mexican leftists I know are equally silent. As they were on Ukraine too. It’s really only when then can root against the US or Jews, as far as I can tell.

feb0120255• 6 months ago

I would say it's really about opposition to death and suffering.

The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.

Many politicians want to use the protests as a pretext for military intervention in Iran, and my blunt opinion is that they don't actually have the interests of Iranians in mind. There are many reasons to believe it will end up worse for both America and the Iranians than our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A valid response would be to say that you think abuses in Iran are bad enough that a military intervention is justified and that it will lead to a better outcome for Iranians. My intuition would be to disagree with that, based on the results of past interventions, etc...

wybiral2• 6 months ago

You don't have to support military intervention to pay attention. People supported Palestine without wanting to bomb Israel.

Also... Are the executed protesters not also death and suffering? What about victims and conflicts resulting from the groups Iran funds?

oldandboring6• 6 months ago

The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.

And yet they are silent on the death and suffering in: Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, Myanmar, Libya. Just to name current active conflicts where people are dying, to say nothing of all the others that have flared up and subsided in my decades on this earth as I've watched "activists" ignore them all so they could hyper-focus on whatever Israel was doing at the time to protect its citizens and the Jewish diaspora. The word "exhausting" doesn't even scratch the surface of how it feels to deal with otherwise smart, educated people who roll around in this hypocrisy-laden dogpile.

olao99• 6 months ago

Hypothecally speaking. If I were to live in an authoritarian country that would shut off all means of communication like that. What off grid technology would be viable?

Lora? Shortwave radio? Or nothing at all?

verzali• 6 months ago

Carrier pigeon

serf• 6 months ago

in a country that hostile to you I would be worried about radiating any kind of EM, honestly. It's too easy to track and could cause undue targetting & victimization.

my real answer : I think at that point in time effort is best spent trying to arrange escape.

my technical answer : depends on the scene. directed optical/laser or microwave is very hard to track if that can facilitate the links you need -- but realistically most war-time off-grid comms historically has been established via runners, dropboxes, or community radio systems ; all options with very real inherent risks.

darkhorse222• 6 months ago

Yeah I like fiber optic lines

tim3333• 6 months ago

Donkey https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/aug/11/low-tech-strat...

Maybe more practically in Tibet I had a Thuraya sat phone which you weren't supposed to have but I don't think there's much they could do about those except maybe search you.

pbasista• 6 months ago

I would imagine that communicating within urban areas might be possible via some kind of a mesh network where e.g. every phone would act as a node that can forward the packets further. Something like that should be possible over WiFi I assume although I am unfamiliar with the existing protocols that would allow that.

There are two main issues with such an application that I can think of:

1. Addressing. How would the nodes know where to send the packet? But I assume there are ways to deal with that which come from the P2P networks like Tor.

2. Edge connectivity. Even if it would be possible to communicate between the regular nodes of the network, those packets would not be able to reach the outside world. So, from abroad or even from the out of town, they would still appear offline. Some kind of edge bridges would probably be necessary to reach connectivity with the outside world.

wnevets• 6 months ago

Wasn't not being jam-able a selling point of Starlink?

falaki2• 6 months ago

Some personal observations as I am in touch with a few folks inside Iran through Starlink.

1. The jamming/disruption is local to large cities most notably the capital, Tehran.

2. Even in Tehran it is not complete and my friends are able to send and receive messages. Uploading videos is harder.

3. The regime is now raiding homes that they suspect have Starlink terminals. I don't know how they identify them but I do wonder if they are using technology to locate them.

tim-tday• 6 months ago

If you have the ability to jam a signal you have the ability to triangulate the source of a signal.

smsm427• 6 months ago

How it's related? Jamming is just drowning signal in noise, how does it help locating the source of the signal?

smsm427• 6 months ago

These things must be big, stationary and likely very sparsely manned (if anything, they must emit a lot of energy which is not healthy). If there ever were some good targets for a surgical application of some B-2s...

Iran is likely jamming Starlink

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