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Discussion (44 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
But this is also an example of weird absolutist thinking about military tactics: is it unbeatable? No. Does it complicate the surveillance and detection picture? Yes.
>Last year, the Iranian government passed legislation that made using, buying or selling Starlink devices punishable by up to two years in prison. The jail term for distributing or importing more than 10 devices can be up to 10 years.
"Iran Prepares Death Penalty Law for Starlink Internet Use"
https://iranwire.com/en/news/145471-iran-prepares-death-pena...
[1] https://x.com/indypersian/status/2050088043118211341
1. The Iranian "protests" weren't organic. They were fomented by the US and Israel [1]. Trump openly admiited it [2].
2. The MEK has an storied history, including being designated as a terrorist group for many years. But what's important is that Kurdish separatists have historically been used as a foil by the US against regimes designated as enemies and then repeatedly being abandoned eg [3]. At the same time, the US allows Turkey to bomb and otherwise oppress Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Syria eg [4];
3. So what actually happened with the Iranian protests several months ago? The answer is that it's hard to say but there are some completely unfounded claims floating about like 20,000 to 30,000 dead. In 3 days. Amnesty International has scrutinized some of the claims [5]. It seems likely that at least 3000 died but were these protestors brutally crushed by the government or a the government quashing a foreign-backed uprising? We've established the foreign powers armed some of these groups;
4. The US essentially has no human intelligence in Iran. The US simply can't operate there. Israel can. Israel is made up of many ethnic groups, including people who are ethnically Persian and speak perfect Farsi. So part of the reason for the Internet crackdown is to stop Israeli intelligence assets operating freely in Iran, agree with that or not. Let's not forget that the US response to Pearl Harbor was to put literally every Japanese person into internment camps;
5. As another example of Israeli inteference in Iran, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan created a refugee crisis where over a million Afghan refugees in Iran. IT's widely believed that Mossad used these Afghan refugees to locale individuals for assassination, so much so that after the 12 day war Iran began expelling these refugees back to Afghanistan [6];
6. The US has quite literally been screwing over Iran since at least 1953 when the CIA at the urging of the British overthrew their democratically elected government. Pretty much everything since, including the Islamic Revolution in 1979 is a direct consequence of US inteference. That's 73 years now.
So my point is that you may look at the Internet blackout and say it's unfair that ordinary Iranians don't have Internet access. This is true but you should also know that Iran is in a war that it didn't start and such devices are being used by hostile foreign agents at a time of war when having such devices could get anyone having or transporting such devices executed.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-t...
[2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-...
[3]: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2012/03/09/mek-camp-ashraf
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Turkish_offensive_into_no...
[5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap...
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Afghan_deportation_from_I...
> On 17 January, in a public speech, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, said “thousands of people” were killed. Since then, on 21January, Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security issued a statement that 3,117 people were killed during the uprising. However, on 16 January 2026, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, said in a media interview that at least 5,000 people had been killed, noting that according to information she received from medical sources, the death toll might be as high as 20,000
The only way for someone to read that as “likely 3000 people have died” is if one takes the Iranian numbers as fact. For those whose experience is that authoritarian states crushing protests provide accurate numbers this might be somewhat convincing. To say nothing of the fact that this is a stupendous number of people.
I found it convincing of the opposite: that this is not a neutral summary of the context.
The US has hundreds of thousands of ethnic Iranian immigrants, not sure where you got the idea that it's not made up of many ethnic groups.
> It seems likely that at least 3000 died but were these protestors brutally crushed by the government or a the government quashing a foreign-backed uprising? We've established the foreign powers armed some of these groups;
I am myself someone who rabidly hates US imperialism but when you use US imperialism to justify slaughtering thousands of civilians you lose all credibility and will not be able to convince anyone who disagrees with you of anything, no matter how many sources you link. Even if the US instigated the protests, and even if it were "only" 3000 dead, killing 3000 protestors is Very Bad and you don't need to go out of your way to justify it. It is possible for both US imperialism to be bad and for an authoritarian religious regime killing innocent people to be bad. One's thinking should be more nuanced than a struct with a single bool.
> Trump openly admiited it [2].
isn't a credible source, as the linked article admits:
The current POTUS contradicts himself from one day to the next and frequently waffles for hours spouting factually incorrect material.It is to prevent hacking and tracking by US and Israel of what is going on over there, it is defensive since it has been shown that Iran's connected infrastructure is thoroughly compromised.
well... so obvious
Due to widespread protests and an attempt to crack down on coordination. This chain of events was widely reported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Internet_blackout_in_Iran
Remember when Ukraine used the Russian cellular internet to operate drones that destroyed numerous Russian heavy bomber aircraft? That’s what the US/Israel would logically be expected to do if there were wide open internet access in Iran.
This is obvious game theory playing out militarily, people only see political suppression but warfare is a totally different ballgame.
If China were waging large scale war on the US I’d expect the exact same countermeasures to happen.