A life and death market: Starlink smuggling to Iran surges

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Title : A life and death market: Starlink smuggling to Iran surges
Link : A life and death market: Starlink smuggling to Iran surges

Iranian authorities said Tuesday that they confiscated 51 Starlink satellite-internet terminals in the Kurdistan province, calling the shipment anti-security goods. Brigadier-General Hossein Rahimi, head of the Economic Security Police, told reporters the devices had been hidden among household items and intercepted under the guise of border transport. “Holders will be dealt with firmly,” Rahimi was quoted as saying, according to Arab media. He added that the seizure brought the total number of terminals confiscated in the first nine months of the current Iranian year to 108, an 881% rise over the same period last year.

Demand for the low-orbit network surged after last year’s nationwide unrest over the economic crisis and the devaluation of the rial. Protesters endured 19 days of internet outages, prompting activists to ask Elon Musk to activate Starlink over Iran. The US Treasury’s General License D-2, issued in 2022, allowed American tech firms to provide services that bypass Tehran’s firewalls, effectively legalizing Starlink for Iranian users, Anadolu Agency said.

Iranian law bans possession or distribution of the terminals, with penalties ranging from imprisonment to execution if a court views the activity as espionage. Parliament cemented the death penalty in the summer of 2025 for cases it classified as espionage, Al-Araby Al-Jadid reported. Security agencies now use detection trucks that trace the signal emitted by Starlink antennas and seize the gear immediately.

An underground market emerged. One terminal sold for about $3,000, a sum residents said a neighborhood could collect. A single rooftop dish could blanket a city block with Wi-Fi, creating pockets of uncensored connectivity that authorities struggled to police. (Read More)