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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nearly 10 percent of Iran’s international internet traffic has yet to return to official gateways and is believed to be passing through unofficial routes such as Starlink, said an Iranian communications official, amid two nationwide internet shutdowns this year as use of the satellite service has increased in recent months.
“Around 90 percent of international traffic had now returned, while the rest of the 10 percent estimated at around one terabit per second, belongs to users who had moved away from official and legal routes during the war and had not yet returned to official gateway,” said Behzad Akbari Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology as cited by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) affiliated Tasnim news agency in mid-September.
Akbari also added that given “the share of Starlink in overall national traffic is estimated at around one terabit per second, Starlink was no longer a potential concern but had become a ‘reality,’ during the war and recent tensions,” noting that “its use has expanded.”
The uptick in users of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service - which relies on a massive network of thousands of small satellites orbiting close to the earth as opposed to high-altitude satellites - comes against the backdrop of several internet shutdowns across the country in recent years.
Iran imposed a near-total shutdown on January 8 for roughly 20 days as nationwide protests peaked, severely restricting communication and the flow of information regarding the protests and authorities' subsequent lethal crackdowns.
A second nationwide blackout was imposed on February 28, affecting a population of more than 93 million, shortly after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran and lasted almost three months in what is regarded by Amnesty International as a tactic "to hide the true extent of grave human rights violations and crimes under international law."
Despite the shutdown of the internet during January protests, individuals inside Iran have been able to send videos and photos.
According to a report from Reuters who cited Raha Bahreini, an Iran researcher at Amnesty International, said the group had verified dozens of videos showing protesters killed or injured by Iranian forces and believed almost all were recorded by people with access to Starlink.
While Starlink is banned in Iran, tens of thousands of terminals may have been smuggled into the country, reported Reuters mid-January, with the help of cited Holistic Resilience, a US nonprofit that has helped deliver terminals to Iranians.
Iran has long employed state-imposed internet blackouts as a tactic to stop the spread of information, stop rights groups from documenting events, and censor human rights abuses inside the country during times of war and unrest - making it difficult to discern the full extent of Tehran’s violent crackdown on dissent.
During the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June of 2025 Iranian authorities imposed a similar near-total internet shutdown.
Human Rights Watch in early March called on Iranian authorities to “immediately end the ongoing internet shutdown and communications restrictions” asserting that “sweeping internet shutdowns violate a range of human rights” and “help conceal large-scale atrocities” and unlawfully restrict access to information.
Likewise, during the brutal repression of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests over the death of a young Kurdish woman, Zhina Amini by the morality police of Iran, in September to December 2022, authorities imposed a range of measures to restrict internet access, including localized and short-term shutdowns.
In September 2023, six months after protests spread across Iran, Starlink users told Rudaw that the service has helped them maintain outside contact following its activation amid Iran’s strict monitoring and restriction of internet within the country.
As Iran grapples with sanctions, fuel shortages, and other signs of mounting unrest, Akbari noted that “developments in Iran in recent months had caused a sharp rise in the number of users, and if restrictions continued, that volume would increase day by day.”
