As we have previously noted, the credentialed media have been publishing rather little on the popular uprisings in Iran. Slightly more has been coming out, but information has still been sparse. More information has been coming out over social media, though, interestingly enough, far less on Bluesky than on Twitter, at least as far as I’ve personally seen. Iran has been fighting that, with a curious number of accounts, including some which were pro-‘Palestinian,’ supporting the theocratic regime over the human rights of the Persian people rising against that tyranny.
Now, Elon Musk is helping the protesters. From The Wall Street Journal:
Iran Is Hunting Down Starlink Users to Stop Protest Videos From Going Global
Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and authorities’ actions
By Benoit Faucon | Monday, January 12, 2026 | 11:00 AM EST
With the government shutting down the internet and throttling phone services, Iranians are leaning heavily on Elon Musk’s Starlink service to share videos of growing protests and the regime’s escalating crackdown with the world.
But Iran has intensified efforts to jam the service, which is banned in the country, and users are being hunted.
If the Journal‘s paywall is stopping you from reading the original, it can be read here for free.
Over the weekend, authorities began searching for and confiscating Starlink dishes in western Tehran, said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at Miaan Group, a U.S. nonprofit opposed to internet censorship.
“It’s electronic warfare,” Rashidi said. He said disruptions are worst in parts of Tehran where protests are taking place and in the evening, when the demonstrators gather.
The battle over information—while secondary to the confrontations taking place nightly in dozens of cities across Iran—has potentially serious consequences. President Trump has threatened to intervene in response to a crackdown by the regime.
Let me stress at this point that I do not support any American military action to support the protesters. Yes, I want them to succeed, I want the whole Iranian government to fall, but this needs to be done by the Iranian people themselves, and not something which the Islamists can say was pushed by the United States. Iranians themselves need to Make Iran Great Again!
Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and the actions of Iranian authorities.
That has always been a problem: with the cutoff of communications by the Iranian government, the credentialed media have far fewer ways to verify stories which come from a single source.
More than 500 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Another rights group, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, circulated video footage Sunday showing a large number of bodies at a morgue in south Tehran.
Trump is scheduled to be briefed Tuesday on his options. One under discussion is to send in more Starlink terminals. Trump said he would ask Musk about the possibility.
“We may get the internet going if that’s possible,” Trump told the reporters.
Iran shut down most internet connections for the country’s 90 million inhabitants late last week, after protests over a crippling economic crisis exploded into large-scale unrest with demonstrators chanting for an end to the regime. The government has also made it difficult to connect calls or send text messages.
The only exceptions are the government itself, its media services and regime loyalists who are registered on a “whitelist” of internet addresses, said diplomats and others communicating with some of those with uninterrupted access.
Well, of course, and I’m seeing that junk on Twitter, gobs of it. The Iranian government and their propagandists have been blaming the uprisings not on the collapsing economy or severe water shortages, but on the United States and Israel; the Great Satan and the Jooooos are always the ones responsible! To the leaders of the Islamic Republic, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have diverted rain clouds, and the US and Israel have manipulated the weather.
We don’t know yet how this will turn out. It’s clear that huge numbers of Iranians are displeased with their government, but the government has guns, and has not been afraid to use them. We can all hope that the theocratic regime will be overthrown, though there’s no way of telling how that will work out for a new government.
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