How Journalists Report From Iran Without Internet
▼ Summary
– Coordinated Israeli and American strikes hit a military compound in Tehran, killing dozens of senior Iranian figures including Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei.
– The Iranian government responded with a near-total internet blackout, a tactic it routinely uses during crises to control information and security.
– These blackouts heavily burden journalists and activists, cutting off their basic tools and making documenting events difficult and dangerous.
– Journalists face severe risks, including arrest on espionage charges that can carry the death penalty, forcing many to avoid tools like Starlink.
– To bypass restrictions, rights groups use encrypted communication and satellite imagery to document and relay information to the outside world.
When communication lines are severed, the flow of information becomes a lifeline. For journalists operating within Iran during an internet blackout, reporting transforms into a high-stakes exercise in ingenuity and courage. The government’s primary concern during a crisis is often preventing external intelligence coordination, but the policy’s heaviest burden falls squarely on media workers who lose access to their most fundamental tools. This creates a stark choice: find a way around the restrictions and risk severe consequences, or stay silent as events unfold unseen by the world.
These blackouts are not isolated incidents but a recurring tactic. During the widespread protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, authorities repeatedly throttled or severed connections to disrupt communication. The current disruption mirrors that pattern, leaving families suddenly unable to contact loved ones and protesters isolated from each other. For journalists like Tehran-based Mostafa Zadeh, the loss of connectivity is a familiar, yet ever-dangerous, reality. He notes that the state’s response to the recent strikes is very similar to its actions during earlier security crackdowns and bouts of unrest.
The personal risks for reporters are immense. Zadeh, who secretly contributed to an American newspaper, once went silent for twelve days during a prior conflict, leaving his editor to fear the worst. Even when technological workarounds exist, they are fraught with peril. Although he had access to a Starlink satellite connection during a recent outage, Zadeh chose not to use it. The risk of Iranian intelligence detecting the satellite signal and tracing it back was too great, he explains, as an arrest on such grounds could lead to charges of treason or espionage, offenses that now carry the death penalty under legal revisions from late 2025.
In this environment, journalists and activists have developed a resilient toolkit for circumvention. They rely on encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Threema, international phone calls, SMS, and citizen-shot videos that are smuggled out of the country in encrypted form. For human rights organizations, technology like Starlink terminals has been a game-changer. Erfan Khorshidi, who leads a team inside Tehran from abroad, states that smuggling these terminals to dissidents ahead of protests allowed, for the first time, the near real-time transmission of reports, video, and photos. Before Starlink, internet blackouts left massive gaps in the documentation of human rights violations, he emphasizes.
When even satellite communications are too risky, external observers turn to other means. Media organizations and rights groups supplement on-the-ground reports with high-resolution imagery from commercial satellite providers like Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs. This data is often combined with medium-resolution imagery from programs like the European Space Agency’s Copernicus to piece together a visual narrative of events. These methods create a patchwork of information, striving to illuminate the truth when direct communication is deliberately extinguished. The work continues, a testament to the relentless pursuit of reporting under siege.
(Source: Wired)
