President Donald Trump has appealed to Elon Musk to help Iranian protesters circumvent a government-imposed internet blackout, underscoring the frontline role Musk’s satellite company Starlink is playing in U.S. foreign policy.
Iran’s government disconnected its 90 million people from the internet on Thursday, in a drastic effort to quell massive nationwide protests against the regime. The internet blackout extended to a partial jamming of the Starlink satellite service, which people in Iran have been using to circumvent official internet censorship, organize protests and communicate with the outside world.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump has spoken with Musk about restoring Starlink internet in Iran.
The issue was escalated internally to Musk at SpaceX over the weekend, with Musk saying he is fully on board with efforts to restore connectivity in Iran and green-lit his engineers to work on a solution, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door discussions. SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, did not respond Monday to requests for comment.
“Starlink is pretty much the only way to connect, to send news out of the country,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, co-founder of NetFreedom Pioneers, of the technology’s role for protesters in Iran. “It’s been very critical. All these videos and pictures that have come out in the past few days have been sent out through Starlink.”
Trump told reporters Sunday on Air Force One that the U.S. government was considering working with Musk to break through Iran’s internet blackout. The president and the billionaire reached a rapprochement in recent months after their relationship spectacularly imploded in June.
“We may get the internet going, if that’s possible,” Trump said. “We may speak to Elon, ‘cause as you know, he’s very good at that kind of thing, he’s got a very good company. So we may speak to Elon Musk. And in fact, I’m going to call him as soon as I’m finished with you.”
When a Washington Post reporter searched Monday for the Iranian flag from a menu of available emojis on X, Musk’s social media platform, the banner that came up was that of the deposed Iranian monarchy that has been adopted by many demonstrators in the country. Al Jazeera reported the change was made Saturday.
Trump’s appeal to Musk to intercede in Iran reflects the growing global power the world’s richest person wields through his privately owned satellite company. With its more than 9,000 satellites, Starlink is by far the largest satellite constellation in the world, giving it a unique ability to allow individuals to communicate in remote locations or in defiance of governments.
“Starlink has the ability to keep people connected when their governments don’t want them to be,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “So when it’s in the U.S. interest to help countries communicate with the outside world — and a place like Iran is pretty high on the list — there are only so many different companies that would offer the ability to do that. Starlink is front and center.”
On the night Musk had dinner with Trump and first lady Melania Trump earlier this month, Starlink said it was offering free broadband service in Venezuela in the wake of the U.S. capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. The company also played a prominent role in supporting Ukraine’s military in its defense against Russia’s invasion, with the Pentagon providing some of the funding.
Rights groups said Sunday that hundreds of demonstrators have been killed in Iran amid some of the largest protests since the Islamic republic was founded in 1979. Trump is weighing a response, including military options, and said a meeting is being set up, but the United States may act earlier.
Ahmad Ahmadian, executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Holistic Resilience, said that while the Iranian government has jammed Starlink periodically for years, this latest attack focused on users in the capital, Tehran, relied on a new, powerful method that targeted users’ ability to upload data, and to send information and images of the protests out of the country.
“I believe that they are using some military-grade jamming tools to jam the radio frequency signals, particularly jamming any videos, any content, any reports coming out of Iran,” he said.
Kimberly Burke, director of government affairs at the consultancy Quilty Space, said Iran’s government was degrading Starlink’s internet service, making it difficult to use.
“You don’t need a global kill switch to cripple the network,” she said. “You just make it unstable, slow and unreliable enough that it barely even works. Think intermittent dial-up speeds.”
NasNet, a group that works to help Iranians connect to Starlink, said Saturday on X that Starlink’s technical team had been able to ameliorate the jamming after pushing through a software update.
“The interference issue is an ongoing game of cat and mouse,” the group said. “Therefore, conditions may change again or even worsen.”
NasNet said Monday that Starlink is now allowing new users in Iran 24 hours of free internet connectivity, up from the one hour it previously offered. Activist groups have been pushing for Starlink to make the service complimentary for a longer period in Iran, as it has in Venezuela.
Musk has offered to provide Starlink access in response to global conflicts, amid natural disasters or periods of unrest. He has deployed it as both a diplomatic tool and positioned it as a lifeline for people who have suffered wildfire or hurricane impacts, or are otherwise in need of internet access.
This month, after the U.S. raid that captured Maduro, Starlink said it was deploying free broadband service in Venezuela through Feb. 3, a gesture “in support of the people of Venezuela,” according to Musk.
Musk was strongly supportive of the U.S. intervention there, publicly congratulating Trump on the outcome of the raid and cementing a reconciliation between the world’s richest person and the man he helped put into office for a second term.
After serving in the Trump administration as a key adviser to the president, even amid fierce blowback to Musk’s businesses, Musk left the federal government last spring. He soon engaged in a public feud with Trump over his signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, the culmination of a series of spats with administration officials. Musk later put aside efforts to start a third major political party and reentered the Republican fold.
Musk has previously expressed defiance against foreign governments seeking to block Starlink. In 2021, referring to the use of Starlink in Afghanistan or other countries where officials prohibit the service, Musk tweeted: “They can shake their fist at the sky.”
In response to another X post in June suggesting Starlink provide internet to Iran’s people, Musk wrote: “The beams are on.”
Iranian officials have for years protested Starlink allowing users in the country to connect to its satellite internet. Tehran filed a case with the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, which ruled last year in favor of Iran over Starlink. However, the organization lacks enforcement powers to compel Starlink to shut off service over Iran.
Yeganeh Torbati and Emily Davies contributed to this report.
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