Overview
- Wall Street Journal reporting, citing unnamed U.S. officials, says Washington covertly moved roughly 6,000 Starlink units into Iran after January’s protests and internet curbs.
- The State Department purchased nearly 7,000 devices, most in January, in what the report calls the first known direct U.S. shipment of Starlink systems to Iran.
- Sources told the paper President Donald Trump was informed of the effort, though it is unclear whether he personally approved it, and the White House declined comment.
- Iran bans possession of Starlink equipment with severe penalties, yet analysts and activists estimate tens of thousands already use the service to bypass state controls.
- Separately, Ukrainian groups say they harvested data on 2,420 Russian Starlink terminals via Telegram schemes and passed it to authorities as SpaceX implements measures and Kyiv rolls out a user whitelist that has prompted some reported access issues.