War reporting during a blackout
Image: Sajad Nori@sajadnori via Unsplash
Within hours of co-ordinated US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran that killed several senior leaders and officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an almost total internet shutdown was imposed, leaving 90 million Iranians cut off from the outside world.
This poses particular challenges for Iranian journalists and human rights defenders trying to report on the conflict in their own country.
Iranians are used to being forced to find ways around communications blackouts. During protests in 2019 and again in 2022, phone and internet services were cut and access to external websites blocked. The worst blackout came in January this year, during a brutal crackdown on protesters.
One go-around was to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access restricted foreign media sources. But as fast as VPNs were blocked, news ones took their place.
Starlink provided another lifeline. It’s estimated around 50 000 Starlink terminals were smuggled into Iran. These initially provided a vital conduit to the outside world in January, when security forces were using live ammunition on protesters. But within days, information flows slowed to a trickle as the government cut terminal connections, possibly by jamming their GPS signals and thereby making it more difficult for them to find overhead satellites.
Clearly not all terminals are jammed, but those journalists who do have access to working Starlink connections often choose not to use them. Mostafa Zadeh, a Tehran-based international journalist, told WIRED Middle East this week that the risk of Iranian intelligence tracing the satellite signal back to him was too great. “An arrest on those grounds could bring charges of treason or espionage,” he says, adding the fear of arrest had silenced many of his colleagues too.
Others remain defiant, but at considerable risk to themselves. WIRED reports that under amendments made to espionage laws last year, anyone convicted of spying for Israel or the US faced the death penalty and confiscation of their assets.
Other tactics employed by journalists and activists include driving to the border to make calls on phones with foreign SIM cards, or smuggling out encrypted videos. The use of high-resolution satellite imagery is another important reporting tool, allowing journalists to use images captured before and after attacks to assess the scale of destruction, corroborated with interviews.
Human rights defenders using Starlink to maintain a constant flow of information must ensure they don’t remain in the same location for too long, continuously relocating throughout the day to avoid detection, and moving from one city to another to find stable connections. This leaves them at risk of arrest at checkpoints manned by paramilitaries or security forces.
Human rights groups have warned the internet shutdown is also worsening the humanitarian toll. For most Iranians, the only source of information about the attacks comes from sketchy and contradictory state broadcasts, and evacuation warnings before airstrikes are not reaching civilians in the line of fire.
https://www.wired.me/story/how-journalists-are-reporting-from-iran-with-no-internet
