A Confession, Six Years Later
At the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on June 23, 2026, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said something no Israeli official had confirmed on the record before: that his government ran a covert operation to smuggle tens of thousands of unlicensed Starlink internet receivers into Iran. Bennett said he launched "a process of acquiring and smuggling into Iran tens of thousands of Starlink receptors" during his 2021–2022 tenure, intended to let anti-government protesters keep coordinating and communicating even when Tehran cut the internet. He also said the effort was quietly abandoned under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "the current incompetent Israeli government stopped doing that... when the protest happened, that infrastructure was not there" (Times of Israel). Bennett is now positioning for a run against Netanyahu ahead of Israel's October 2026 election, which gives the disclosure an obvious political charge (CTech/Calcalist).
Set the politics aside, though, and the substance is a clean case study in the regulatory gray zone that low-earth-orbit satellite internet has created: a technology capable of routing around any government's control of its own airwaves, deployed by one state against another's sovereignty, while that same state enforces strict licensing over the identical technology at home.
Iran's Answer: Criminalize the Signal
Iran has never licensed Starlink. Tehran treats any unauthorized satellite ground terminal as an illegal use of its national radio spectrum, and enforcement escalates sharply during unrest. Since the June 2025 war with Israel and the United States, Iran's parliament has gone further: a law approved by the Guardian Council and referred to President Masoud Pezeshkian on October 8, 2025 sets six months to two years in prison and confiscation of equipment for personal use of Starlink or other unauthorized satellite internet, and the death penalty where such use is tied to espionage or "acting against the system" on behalf of an "enemy agent" (Iran International). That is a capital-punishment regime built around the possession of a consumer antenna.
Israel's Own Licensing Regime
The contrast with Israel's domestic approach is stark. Starlink needed a formal license from Israel's Communications Ministry before it could operate legally inside the country. Minister Shlomo Karhi granted that license in 2024, and service only went live after SpaceX agreed to route Gaza Strip terminal approvals through Israeli security vetting, with Musk stating no terminal had connected from Gaza without clearance (Globes). In other words: Israel insists on licensing, vetting and control when satellite internet touches its own territory or contested areas it administers — and simultaneously ran an unlicensed, covert deployment of the same hardware into a neighboring state's territory when doing so served its strategic interests.
Steelman: Sovereignty Over Spectrum Is a Real Interest
Before dismissing Iran's posture as pure repression, it's worth stating the strongest version of the regulator's case. Radio spectrum is a scarce, shared resource, and the ITU's Radio Regulations exist precisely because uncoordinated transmissions can cause interference, undermine licensed telecom operators, and let unaccountable actors move data and money across borders outside any legal system's reach. A state has a legitimate interest in knowing who is beaming signals into and out of its territory, for tax, security and public-safety reasons — this isn't unique to authoritarian states; the FCC and Ofcom both police unlicensed spectrum use domestically too. Iran can also fairly note that a foreign government's own former prime minister has now confirmed state-directed smuggling aimed explicitly at regime change, which is a different category of concern than a private citizen buying a dish for streaming.
Why Criminalization Still Fails
But a death-penalty statute aimed at antenna ownership is a wildly disproportionate response, and it will not work. Washington already built a narrower, more defensible tool: OFAC's General License D-2, issued in 2022 after the Mahsa Amini protests, formally authorizes exports of consumer-grade internet connectivity hardware and services — including satellite terminals — to ordinary Iranians, explicitly to support internet freedom rather than regime change operations (itNews Asia). That is the more proportionate model: a transparent legal channel for consumer connectivity, separated from covert state action aimed at toppling a government. Iran's response — capital punishment for possession — treats every antenna as a potential coup instrument, which guarantees maximal fear and minimal actual control, since LEO constellations are, by design, extremely hard to jam or geofence at scale.
What Comes Next
Bennett's disclosure will likely become a campaign talking point rather than a policy inflection point. But it usefully demonstrates that no government — not Iran's, not Israel's — has a coherent, principled position on satellite-internet sovereignty yet. The durable fix isn't smuggling operations or execution statutes; it's clearer multilateral norms, closer to the licensed-consumer-access model the US has already tested, that separate ordinary connectivity from state-directed subversion.