Iranian activists have launched elaborate, nationwide efforts to provide protesters with an alternate internet
of the nation’s economy. “A lot of what I do is vetting,” said the activist tasked with finding partners in countries neighboring Iran. Another organizer said the search was particularly fraught in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates port city popular among “comrade smugglers.”
“Having unauthorized communications devices could basically make you a spy,” says one activist, who, while imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, met a jailed journalist whose employer had issued him a satellite phone. What’s standard equipment for a foreign correspondent had brought a charge of espionage in Iran.
Reza says his most terrifying moment came at a demonstration he was leading in November. An undercover agent wrapped him in a bear hug and pulled him toward a waiting car. That Iranian American entrepreneur personally purchased 100 Starlink dishes, picking them up at a SpaceX facility. “We reboxed them to kind of make it look like something else. And then it gets hidden in other cargo,” he says. The effort is separate from the smuggling campaign organized by the network of activists. “We have three different routes,” says the entrepreneur.
Asked by TIME if the company would lift the fees in Iran or donate dishes, a SpaceX spokesman declined comment. The spokesman also demurred on the question of whether the company is working with the U.S. government to bring Starlink to Iran. “A free Iran, both in terms of national security and many other ways, is in line with the free world,” says Ahmad Ahmadian, who runs a West Coast technology nonprofit that develops tools resistant to internet shutdowns. “It’s very obvious: Putin and China? Or the West? The Iranian people are very clear about who they want to be allied with. They’re chanting in the streets.”
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