On 13 October 2026, Mohammad Amin Aghamiri, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Cyberspace Council, called Starlink a "tool of war" used "for command and control by the enemy, for espionage and information gathering," according to Al Jazeera's report. He said Iran has "several systems for cutting off Starlink satellite terminals". He also backed a tiered-access model, in which selected groups such as traders, researchers and journalists keep protected international access while everyone else is restricted. Days earlier, the government spokesperson said of deliberate slowdowns: "We don't deny this issue."
This is a policy proposal, not just rhetoric. It would make the shutdown a permanent feature of network design.
The strongest case for the government's position
The argument deserves a fair statement. Iran says it is at war with the United States and Israel, which began strikes on 28 February 2026. A state at war has real security concerns. A satellite terminal bypasses every domestic chokepoint, and Starlink traffic could in principle carry military coordination as easily as protest video. Officials also say slowdowns protect databases and services from cyberattacks. A tiered system looks, from that angle, like a compromise: restrict most users but preserve access for people with an economic or professional need, instead of imposing a blackout.
That framing is worth taking seriously, because it is the one other governments will borrow. It fails for three reasons.
Reason one: the legal test is about necessity, not labels
Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 19 allows restrictions on expression only where they are provided by law and necessary and proportionate to a legitimate aim. The UN Human Rights Council has said so directly. Resolution 47/16, adopted on 13 July 2021 by a vote of 43 to none with 4 abstentions, condemns measures that intentionally prevent or disrupt access to information online and asked the UN human rights office to study the practice.
That study, report A/HRC/50/55 of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, recommends that states refrain from the full range of internet shutdowns, citing their indiscriminate and disproportionate effects. The report also addresses the telecommunications treaty provisions governments often invoke. The ITU Constitution's stoppage and suspension clauses, Articles 34 and 35, must be read together with states' human rights obligations. A tiered system fits neither test. Giving access to an approved list does not narrow the restriction to the threat. It sorts people by whom the state trusts.
Reason two: tiers make press freedom depend on a permit
The named beneficiaries include journalists. A journalist whose access depends on state approval has a licence, not press freedom. Under such a scheme, the people most able to document abuses are the ones with the most to lose by doing so. Researchers and traders get access because their work is useful to the state, not because they have a right to it.
There is also an operational problem. Any whitelist must be built, maintained and policed, which means a registry of identities tied to international connectivity. That registry is a surveillance asset. Its existence changes behaviour even when no one is being punished.
Reason three: the enforcement record shows the cost
The numbers show how heavily Iran already relies on these tools. Al Jazeera reports that Iran's roughly 90 million people faced two near-total shutdowns in 2026: about three weeks during the January protests, and 88 days at the start of the war. Against Starlink specifically, using or possessing a terminal carries baseline sentences of six months to two years. Importing or distributing terminals carries up to five years, and the report says national-security or espionage charges can raise the penalty as far as death. A Tehran-based expert described methods that include jammers, spoofed GPS locations, and raids on sellers.
A deputy technology minister reportedly went further in late September, warning that authorities might have to cut electricity in a future crisis, since Starlink does not depend on the domestic network. That is a revealing admission. If the logic of the model is that no connection may bypass the state, the only complete enforcement tool is to cut power.
Why Iran is not an outlier
Shutdowns are growing, not fading. Access Now's #KeepItOn coalition documented 313 shutdowns in 52 countries in 2025, the highest number since 2016. Governments watch each other's playbooks. Aghamiri also said Iran is prepared to share its terminal-cutting technology with aligned countries. If tiered access is presented as a middle path between blackout and openness, other states facing protests or conflict will find it attractive.
The pro-innovation objection is practical as well as principled. Digital businesses, remote workers, researchers and startups depend on predictable connectivity. A model in which international access is rationed turns every Iranian firm into a supplicant and discourages the investment and talent that depend on an open network. The government's own policy document, released by state media after nearly two years of consideration, reportedly floats unblocking Google Play and WhatsApp. That suggests officials understand the costs. Implementation has reportedly stalled amid wars and protests.
What policymakers should do
- Treat tiering as a shutdown. Monitoring bodies should count selective access regimes in shutdown tallies. A restriction that applies to most people is still a restriction.
- Press the ITU on the legal reading. Articles 34 and 35 should be cited consistently as subject to human rights law, so that states cannot present treaty text as a licence.
- Protect circumvention tools and the people who use them. Satellite connectivity is a legitimate lifeline in a blackout, and prison terms for possessing it should be called what they are.
- Demand specifics on necessity. If a government claims cyberattack defence, it should publish what is being slowed, for how long, and why narrower measures failed.
The security concerns behind Iran's position are real and deserve engagement. The remedy, however, is targeted defence of specific systems, not a network where connectivity is a privilege granted to the approved. A government that says openly that it slows the internet, and then proposes to ration what remains, has told its citizens what the architecture is for.