BLUF: Iran’s Information Blackout
The protests that have engulfed Iran over the past two weeks and seized global attention now face an attention deficit that could lead to a retreat under the weight of the Ayatollah’s brutal crackdown. Regime forces have deployed every tool at their disposal to smother dissent, tragically, using everything from live fire to an internet blackout and the severing of phone lines. The result has been a country plunged into informational darkness, conveniently concealing much of the regime’s violence from the outside world.
Even so, dissidents have found ways to smuggle fragments of video and photos beyond Iran’s borders, offering harrowing glimpses of the carnage and jolting the international community. The Times (UK) reports that between 20,000 and 100,000 Starlink terminals may be operating inside Iran in an effort to reconnect ordinary citizens with the world. But despite Starlink’s best efforts, some experts believe that the regime had successfully jammed those systems over the weekend.
As recently as yesterday, many foreign policy wonks in Washington were buzzing (with good reason) about how the United States was on the cusp of another confrontation with Iran. But President Trump seemed to have slightly cooled that speculation, saying he had been told “on good authority” that killings and executions inside Iran had stopped.
As the communications link flickers out under the blackout, so too could the international attention that fuels the pressure on political leaders to act. Without a continuous flow of information to move public opinion, the likelihood of decisive action could diminish.
To be sure, outrage is harder to sustain without images, videos, and a steady stream of evidence. Silence, it turns out, is a powerful accomplice. The people of Iran remain trapped under a dictatorship willing to slaughter them by the thousands while offering little hope of a better future. Even in the forced information desert we are finding ourselves in, their story is far from over. The unanswered question is when the next chapter will begin and will we hear it from the first word, or only once it’s already two or three pages in.
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