CNN:

Analysis by Mostafa Salem

Iran has deployed new techniques to swiftly and decisively crush nationwide protests, signaling a tactical shift by a regime that now views domestic dissent as an extension of the summer war with Israel.

What began as the regime’s age-old riot-control methods quickly escalated into advanced techniques to suppress protests, combining cutting-edge military technology with sophisticated psychological operations, according to experts.

Low-flying surveillance drones, signal jammers, a rapid-response propaganda apparatus, and the violent deployment of force were unleashed simultaneously by a regime keen to learn from each wave of unrest.

Iran’s latest playbook to crush dissent reflects lessons adopted after deep Israeli infiltration of the country shocked and embarrassed the regime due to the role in played in Israel’s success in the 12-day war in June. The increasingly paranoid government now frames the latest wave of domestic unrest as the “thirteenth day of war” with Israel, painting protesters as foreign agents that need to be “dealt with.”

‘Everything is under surveillance’

Protesters were heavily surveilled with CCTV cameras on the streets, but even those who chose to protest from their homes by shouting anti-regime slogans from their windows were being watched. Iranian police distributed a video titled “Identifable Sounds” showing drones hovering outside apartment buildings to find people chanting against the regime.

Set to ominous background music, the footage showed a drone operator peering into residential windows to identify people chanting “death to the dictator,” followed by scenes of security officials marking buildings with warning stickers, and in some cases, arresting residents.

“We got information that someone in your building was chanting and it was coming from your apartment,” a member of the security forces tells a man in the blurred video posted by Iranian media outlets on social media. The post citing Iran’s national police read, “Everything is under surveillance.”

Another tactic involved a communications blackout at an unprecedented scale. For days, Iran became nearly impossible to reach from the outside world. Even SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet terminals, used by Iranians to circumvent the restrictions, were jammed using what experts describe as military-grade technology.

“I haven’t seen anything like that at all. It was not regular jamming, they have some sort of military equipment,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity expert and director at New York City-based Miaan group, a digital advocacy group, said.

The country’s decades-long push to nationalize its internet infrastructure – accelerated by intensifying international sanctions – has given the state far greater capacity to censor, throttle and control online activity.

Iran completely shut down the internet during the 2019 fuel-price protests and the 2022 women’s rights demonstrations. But the scale and sophistication of the recent blackout demonstrates significant advancements in the government’s ability to activate and enforce communications control.

“You now see near total automation of the process… and it’s almost an instantaneous process at that point,” Alp Toker, the founder of internet monitoring group Netblocks, told CNN. “It’s amongst the most severe internet disruptions we’ve tracked around the world.”

Rashidi said the Starlink terminals were being jammed, using methods like those employed by the Russian military in Ukraine.

“They (the regime) haven’t tried to jam Starlink before. They are definitely better than ever,” Rashidi said.

Although Starlink is not officially licensed to operate in Iran, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX which owns Starlink, had previously stated that the service is active and available in the country.

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