Iran is now enduring the longest nationwide internet shutdown yet documented, with the blackout nearing 50 days even after the Iran war ceasefire. That fact matters beyond censorship alone: it has cut families, journalists, and dissidents off from one another while making independent reporting from inside the country far harder.

The blackout also exposes a larger reality. In modern authoritarian crises, control over connectivity is not a side issue but a core instrument of state power, and satellite internet has become one of the few tools capable of weakening that control.