Ninety million Iranians are almost completely cut off from the outside world. For the fifth day in a row, the Iranian regime blocked the internet and telephone connections in the country on Monday. The messages and images that do seep through show that the large-scale protests that started two weeks ago in Iran are still continuing.
There are also more and more images of Iranian security forces using violence against demonstrators. This weekend there were on social media videos to see dozens of body bags outside a medical morgue in Kahrizak, a Tehran suburb. Large groups of people are standing around it; many of them are crying, others are unzipping their pockets, probably looking for their loved ones.
Estimates of the number of deaths vary. On Sunday, the US-based NGO HRANA reported that the death toll had passed 500. But it is precisely because of the internet blockade that it is impossible to get a good picture of the situation in the country.
A few calls in the morning
Denying the Iranian people access to the internet is a tried and tested recipe of the regime in times of protests or unrest. For example, the internet was shut down last June during the Twelve Day War with Israel, as well as during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.
Still, the current blockade is exceptional in its scale, said Amir Rashidi, an Iranian digital rights and security expert at Miaan Group, a US-based human rights organization. “Even the landline telephone lines have been disconnected. If you are lucky, you can make a few calls in the morning. But after five o’clock in the afternoon nothing is possible, precisely because people take to the streets in the evening to demonstrate.”
“After the 2009 protests, the Iranian regime realized how powerful the internet can be,” says Rashidi. It decided to take action. “It did this by creating a national internet, a kind of gigantic intranet.” This allowed the authorities to close off access to the world wide web, but it was possible for businesses and government to continue to communicate via the national network.
This time, the government has also closed this local network, something that, according to Rashidi, only happened once before, during the ‘Bloody November’ protests in 2019. According to him, this underlines that the Iranian rulers see the current protests as an existential threat.
People examine bodies in body bags in the courtyard of the Forensic Diagnostic Laboratory in Kahrizak, Still from a video from social media, published on January 10, 2026 and verified by NRC on January 12, 2026.
AFP
Images come via Starlink
US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he wants to talk to tech billionaire Elon Musk about restoring the internet in Iran. Starlink, the satellite network of Musk’s space company SpaceX, is currently active in Iran.
Many of the images from Iran that appear despite the internet blockade come via Starlink. Rashidi and other experts estimate that there are several tens of thousands of satellite dishes in Iran that can communicate with Starlink satellites.
Although the Iranian regime tries to disrupt the connection between satellites and receivers with military transmitters (jamming), this is only partially successful. Currently, according to Rashidi, only 10 to 20 percent of data packets between satellite and receiver are lost due to the regime’s jammers.
The Russians already discovered how difficult it is to disrupt Starlink in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian armed forces also use the system. Starlink uses swarms of so-called LEOs (satellites in low earth orbit). This gives the system a degree of overcapacity, making it much less vulnerable than connections that depend on a single satellite.
Why isn’t more information coming from Iran via Starlink? Firstly, because the normal internet in Iran is still down, it is difficult for others to send photos and videos of the protests to people with a Starlink dish. Secondly, safety is a reason. “The authorities are looking for people who use Starlink, so users will often turn off their Starlink terminals or use them in different places each time.”
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