Imagine a small white dish, something like a flat plate fixed on a rooftop, balcony or courtyard. Instead of using cables, telecom companies or a domestic operator, it connects directly to a satellite. In many countries, this is just an internet device. In Iran today, the same small object can cost several thousand dollars, be smuggled across several borders, pass through several middlemen, connect a few families or businesses to the global network, and then appear in a security case as a “tool of the enemy.”
This report begins at the moment when the internet stopped being a public right and became a smuggled commodity. The major shutdown that began on February 28, 2026 (9 Esfand 1404), after the attacks by the United States and Israel, lasted more than eighty days and became one of the longest periods of nationwide disconnection in the world. Now, as reports speak of the gradual return of internet access in Iran, the problem is not over. What is returning is not freedom of communication. It is a return to the situation before late December 2025: a filtered, unsafe, class-based, slow and fragile internet, always dependent on the decisions of security bodies.
Sattar Hashemi, the minister of communications, has said that the process of restoring the country’s internet to its pre-Dey 1404 state has begun. NetBlocks has also reported a partial return of connectivity after 88 days and 2,093 hours of near-total isolation from the global network. But the same reports show that the return is gradual, uneven and fragile. Major social media platforms remain blocked, and access levels in the first hours of reopening stayed far below normal.
The government says it cuts and restores communication for security reasons. In practice, the result is a market in which access to the world depends on money, connections, risk and luck. In this story, Starlink is neither a saviour nor simply a spy tool. It is a sign of the point where censorship, corruption, sanctions, the black market and security case-building meet.
