Activists spent years preparing for a communications blackout in Iran, smuggling in Starlink satellite internet systems and making digital shutdowns harder for the authorities to enforce.

As Iran’s theocratic regime faces its greatest challenge in five decades, it is confronting not only the fury of the people disillusioned by the Islamic Revolution’s unfulfilled promises but also Western technology.

Shutdowns are indiscriminate and economically damaging. But they sever the connective infrastructure that allows protest movements to form, share information, coordinate and scale up. Iran’s repeated shutdowns in 2019, 2022, and 2026 illustrate this transition from surveillance as a norm to shutdown as an emergency instrument of rule.