The US smuggled thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran in January to support anti-government protesters inside the country, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The report said that the State Department purchased 7,000 Starlink terminals several months ago with the aim of providing them to anti-government elements inside Iran, and that about 6,000 were smuggled into the country in January after the Iranian government cut internet access as part of its crackdown against the protest.
The report contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that it didn’t provide any material support to the protesters, though President Trump was publicly encouraging the protests. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on January 13. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!”
The unrest involved some armed clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish militants who reportedly entered Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan, where the US has a military presence. Iranian authorities said at the end of January that they had seized a shipment of 51 Starlink terminals in Iran’s Kurdistan region, which borders Iraqi Kurdistan.
US Treasury Scott Bessent has also boasted about how US sanctions collapsed Iran’s economy and sparked the protests. “At the Treasury, what we have done is created a dollar shortage in the country … It came to a swift and, I would say, grand culmination in December, when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank,” Bessent told a Senate committee last week.
“The central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street,” he added.
