In late October, Iranian border guards discovered the gray box in a van crossing from Iraq. People inside said that inside was a sleek machine resembling a monitor. But after questioning the driver, the guards waved the vehicle through.
According to the people involved in some of the shipments, the guards had just allowed a Starlink satellite dish sold by a division of Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, into the country. Around 200 of the devices, which enable users to access the internet through satellite links, have been smuggled into Iran by supporters of a month’s long rights movement to help protesters circumvent a government crackdown on online communications.
Users say that the number of Iranians with access to Starlink is a small fraction of the millions who use virtual private networks and other platforms to evade government restrictions. But the terminals provide internet access free from the government’s controls, making them especially useful for protesters seeking to send video files and communicate securely. Social-media apps have been widely used to organize and share footage of the protests.
