After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted last week that the U.S. caused the crash of the Iranian rial in late December in order to spark anti-government protests, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. then smuggled in about 6,000 Starlink terminals to be used by protestors.
“Tehran has repeatedly accused Washington, without evidence, of playing a role in fomenting popular dissent and organizing last month’s nationwide demonstrations in the country of 90 million people. Iranians were protesting years of economic mismanagement, a weakening currency and hard-line rule,” the Journal asserts. “The U.S. has denied any connection to the uprising, though the Starlink operation shows the Trump administration has done more to support antiregime efforts than has been previously known.”
The Journal names Mora Namdar, who until December led the State Department’s Middle East Bureau, a being behind the effort to get Starlink terminals into Iran. In August she sent a memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging the acquisition of Starlink expressly for delivery to Iran. While her bureau “has funded a variety of VPNs and other internet freedom technologies, it is useless when the internet is shut down,” she wrote.
