Technology could help Iranians break their rulers' grip - and give freedom a fighting chance.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held up a Starlink terminal at the United Nations on September 24, he offered an intriguing picture of what Iran’s future might look like. A small communications device represented something enormous: the possibility that Tehran’s rulers could lose their ability to isolate the people they govern.
“The Iranian regime is especially afraid when their people have this,” Netanyahu said. His message was straightforward. Access to information gives ordinary people power that authoritarian governments would prefer to keep for themselves.
Could technology help liberate Iran?
There is reason to be optimistic.
A government can endure widespread dissatisfaction when its citizens feel isolated, frightened and uncertain about what everyone else believes. Someone struggling in one city might assume that people elsewhere accept conditions she finds intolerable. Independent communication can puncture that illusion. Discovering that others share your frustrations can turn private despair into public possibility.
That is where satellite internet becomes politically consequential. It offers connections that bypass the domestic telecommunications networks authorities can restrict or shut down. Iran has repeatedly complained to the International Telecommunication Union about unauthorized Starlink terminals, acknowledging difficulty locating all the small, portable devices across its territory. Tehran’s own complaints demonstrate that its control already has gaps.
Those gaps could grow.
For Iranians, dependable communication could mean maintaining contact during a crackdown, sharing evidence of abuse or hearing accounts that contradict official explanations. Human Rights Watch has documented how internet shutdowns obstruct efforts to verify killings and other violations. When authorities can disconnect a population, they can also make its suffering harder to see.
Breaking that isolation would give citizens a better chance of being heard.
The opportunity becomes particularly significant as Iran’s economic troubles deepen. Reuters reported that the rial reached approximately 2.688 million per dollar on October 3, with inflation exceeding 70%. Economic hardship alone cannot predict political change. But independent information could make it harder for officials to explain away deteriorating living standards or conceal how widely those hardships are shared.
Technology also allows Iranians abroad to remain connected with relatives and communities inside the country. That connection could support an exchange of ideas about a better future. A movement seeking freedom needs ways to discuss what should follow repression, as well as ways to protest it.
Naturally, a satellite terminal cannot dissolve the Revolutionary Guard or persuade security officers to refuse unlawful orders. Political change requires organization and difficult decisions by people inside Iran.
Nor is Starlink invulnerable. Independent monitors documented intense interference during January’s crackdown. Equipment and electricity remain necessary, and connectivity does not automatically provide anonymity. These obstacles deserve practical attention because the potential benefits are substantial.
The optimistic argument is that every durable connection expands the space in which Iranians can think and act for themselves. Enough connections could make nationwide isolation increasingly difficult.
Netanyahu’s gesture therefore pointed toward a promising complement to military and economic pressure: strengthening the Iranian people’s ability to communicate independently.
No foreign leader can promise when Iran will be free.
But neither should anyone assume its rulers will forever control the conditions that keep them in power. Technologies evolve. Citizens adapt. Systems that once appeared impregnable develop weaknesses.
Starlink may help widen one of those weaknesses into an opening.
A free Iran would ultimately be the achievement of Iranians. Giving them better access to one another — and to the world — could help make that achievement possible.
(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)