“The national Internet shutdown is very, very rare. And the reason for that is because of the collateral damage. The airports don’t work. The banks don’t work. A lot of internal services do not work.”
The line captures a reality engineers and infrastructure operators recognize: when a state turns communications off at scale, it is never just a media story. It is an operational decision that ripples through payments, logistics, healthcare intake, and the basic ability to document what is happening.
In Iran’s current unrest, the most consequential “front line” has been the network itself how it is severed, how it is bypassed, and how physical systems behave when digital coordination disappears.
1. National internet shutdown architecture
Iran’s ability to impose a near-total outage reflects design choices made over years: centralized control points, chokable transit links, and policy levers that can push connectivity toward a domestic intranet while restricting international routes. When the switch flips, the results are mechanical card payments stall, airline and airport systems degrade, and interbank workflows falter matching the warning that “the airports don’t work” and “the banks don’t work.”
The engineering takeaway is that “kill switches” are not mythical; they are implemented through routing controls, ISP coordination, and regulatory authority over last-mile providers. The societal effect is magnified by dependency: the more daily life leans on always-on connectivity, the more a shutdown becomes a blunt instrument that also injures the state’s own service delivery.
2. Satellite internet as an improvised backhaul
With terrestrial routes constrained, Iranians have relied on satellite connectivity, including smuggled terminals. The main article notes that some people have been able to connect using Starlink devices that have entered the country over the past few years.
That detail matters because satellite links change the topology of censorship: instead of filtering content, authorities must contend with radio links outside the local fiber and mobile core. Satellite access also shifts who can transmit outward; when terminals cluster in affluent areas, the external picture becomes geographically uneven even when videos circulate.
3. Signal jamming and packet loss as a censorship tool
Authorities do not need to “block a website” to degrade a satellite link; they can attack the physical layer. Reports of interference describe heavy packet loss numbers as high as “80% packet loss” consistent with RF jamming that disrupts the terminal-to-satellite path. In practical terms, that turns uploading video or maintaining a stable messaging session into a stop-start gamble.
The engineering relevance is straightforward: resiliency depends on link budget, antenna placement, spectrum environment, and rapid adaptation by the provider. Where jamming is localized, connectivity becomes a street-by-street phenomenon rather than a national condition.
4. VPNs and circumvention services under stress
During upheaval, circumvention tools are often treated as purely software. In reality, they are distributed systems that depend on funding, server capacity, and routing paths that remain reachable. One operator characterized the current disruption as “the most extreme shutdown” seen inside the country, noting it was executed “faster and with fewer loopholes.”
That implies aggressive blocking of known endpoints, rapid rule updates, and tighter control over domestic DNS and transit. For users, the failure mode is not just “no internet,” but unreliable tunnels, throttled encrypted traffic, and constant endpoint churn that favors those with the newest configurations and the most technical fluency.
5. Surveillance drones and the sensor layer over crowds
Accounts from human rights monitors described the use of “surveillance drones” alongside lethal crowd-control tactics. Whatever the specific platforms, drones matter because they couple observation with rapid tasking: aerial video can cue ground units, track movement between neighborhoods, and extend visibility when street cameras are disabled or obstructed. In a communications blackout, the state’s internal networks can remain intact even as the public internet collapses, preserving command-and-control for sensors and response teams.
The long-term engineering pattern is the same in many countries: as cameras and drones proliferate, the contest shifts from “getting online” to “staying untracked while online.” The core story, technologically, is not a single tool but an ecosystem: centralized shutdown controls, alternative satellite paths, electronic interference, circumvention infrastructure, and persistent sensing.When these systems collide, the result is a confusing partial picture some signals getting out, others disappearing shaped as much by network physics and architecture as by any single decision made in public.
