Starlink has enabled Iranian protestors to keep in contact with the outside world, but raises policy issues. (credit: SpaceX)

When Iran took the Internet hostage, Elon Musk held the keys

by Bharath Gopalaswamy
Monday, February 23, 2026

As protests spread across Iran in early 2026, the government reached for one of its most reliable tools of control. Internet access was sharply restricted, mobile data was slowed or cut, and international connections were disrupted. For years, such shutdowns allowed authoritarian states to fragment protest movements and choke off the flow of information beyond their borders. This time, the blackout did not fully hold.

As Iran’s terrestrial networks faltered, some citizens turned to satellite internet to stay online, relying in particular on Starlink terminals smuggled into the country in recent years. Images and videos continued to reach foreign media. Communication persisted unevenly but persistently, even as authorities intensified efforts to jam signals and seize equipment. What had once been a near-total shutdown became a contested space, shaped not only by state power but by private infrastructure operating beyond the reach of national controls.

Starlink did not cause Iran’s protests or determine their outcome. But its presence altered the information environment in ways that mattered. Even limited access was enough to show that the state no longer holds an absolute monopoly over connectivity. Control over information now depends not only on domestic law and infrastructure, but also on which private actors own and operate global networks.

For Iranian authorities, this was not merely a technical inconvenience. It was a direct challenge to state authority. The response was swift. Signal interference intensified. Starlink use was criminalized. Officials renewed efforts to accelerate a tightly controlled national network designed to function with minimal dependence on the global internet. These moves reflected a clear recognition that privately provided connectivity had become politically consequential.

What unfolded was not simply repression adapting to technology. It was a struggle over who gets to decide when and how people can communicate.

The policy vacuum

Starlink is a private, commercial service. Yet in moments of crisis, decisions about coverage, pricing, access, and resistance to state pressure shape political outcomes inside sovereign countries. These decisions are not made by governments or international bodies. They are made by firms whose primary mandate is commercial, not political.

Private actors that control critical digital infrastructure now possess leverage that increasingly resembles state power, but without equivalent accountability. They can expand access or constrain it. They can comply with pressure or resist it. In environments where information control is central to political survival, these choices matter deeply.

Authoritarian states understand this clearly. Iran’s response was not limited to suppressing protest. It was aimed at contesting private control over connectivity itself. Signal jamming, legal penalties, and digital isolation strategies were all efforts to reassert authority over systems that had slipped beyond state reach. In effect, a commercial service was treated as a strategic actor.

Democratic governments occupy a more ambiguous position. They benefit when private platforms and infrastructure enable free expression and expose abuses. Yet when those same tools provoke retaliation, escalation, or broader geopolitical risk, officials often emphasize that the decisions lie with independent companies rather than states. Moral outcomes are welcomed, while political responsibility is quietly deferred.

This ambiguity amounts to a form of strategic outsourcing. Private firms shape the information environment during political crises, while governments avoid defining the boundaries of acceptable risk or responsibility. The result is uncertainty for everyone involved. Companies face pressure to make choices that resemble foreign policy decisions without clear guidance or legitimacy. Users rely on connectivity that may expose them to surveillance or punishment. States respond with increasingly aggressive measures to regain control.

Where governance lags

The Iran case highlights a deeper governance gap. Existing policy frameworks were built for a world where connectivity flowed through cables, towers, and state-regulated providers. They offer little guidance for global satellite networks that operate across borders and beyond traditional territorial control. Export controls, licensing regimes, and telecommunications law lag behind the political impact of privately owned constellations with near-global reach.

The institutions we do have for governing space and satellite activity are only beginning to grapple with these questions. At the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the February 2026 Scientific and Technical Subcommittee meetings in Vienna featured side events on responsible AI in Earth observation, digital twins for disaster management, and the emerging Space4Ocean Alliance linking space and ocean governance. Yet even in these forums, debates about norms, debris, and data rarely extend to the concrete question of who should decide when a commercial constellation can be used to route around an authoritarian shutdown or what obligations such providers owe to the people they put at risk.

This gap is unlikely to close on its own. As satellite connectivity expands and costs fall, similar dynamics will emerge in other authoritarian contexts. States that cannot fully control information flows will increasingly seek to disrupt, degrade, or criminalize them. Private actors will be forced to decide how far they are willing to shape outcomes without a public mandate.

UNOOSA’s conferences on space law and policy, together with its Space4Ocean and Space2030 initiatives, are slowly building multilateral language around responsible behavior in orbit, public-private partnerships, and the use of satellite data for resilience and human security. But these conversations still treat commercial operators as stakeholders to be consulted, not as strategic actors whose decisions can tilt the balance inside a country like Iran. Until bodies like UNOOSA and its member states are willing to define clearer expectations for private constellations in moments of crisis, responsibility will remain as distributed and contested as the networks themselves.

The lesson from Iran is not that technology inevitably undermines repression. It is that power has shifted faster than governance. When Iran took the internet hostage, Elon Musk did not set out to be an arbiter of political struggle in Tehran. But by controlling an offshore escape route for information, he and his company held a set of keys the Islamic Republic could not easily confiscate. The remaining question is not whether private actors will shape these moments, but who will accept responsibility when they do.

Bharath Gopalaswamy is an aerospace and defense expert with extensive experience in AI, space technologies, and advanced systems. He is the author of Final Frontier: India and Space Security.

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