Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

This morning on Air Force One President Trump was asked by reporters what he meant by ‘help is on its way’ for the protesters in Iran, and replied “You’re going to find out soon.” Then he added, “It's a good idea for Americans to leave Iran.”

Speculation is that the next wave might be cyber, intended to take down the Iranian state broadcaster and as much of internal government communications as possible. The US has already increased Farsi language shortwave broadcasting into Iran. (I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC has as well.)

It's known that President Trump spoke to Elon yesterday (while Secretary of War Hegseth was visiting Starbase) to discuss what can be done to restore internet connectivity for the Iranian people. Starlink is now free in Iran. SpaceX has proven very adept at defeating attempts to jam Starlink and they probably have a team working on that right now. Hopefully they can fire up Direct-to-Cell in Iran, giving everybody with a cell phone the ability to send text messages. That would be really hard for the IRGC to jam.

There's still no concrete indication of US military movements. Commercial satellite imagery shows just a single US KC-135 aerial refueling tanker on the ground on Diego Garcia, which is normal. The US currently only has about six ships in the Middle East, but it's conceivable that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group which was in the South China sea could be on the move. There's no confirmation of that though. B1, B2 and B52 bombers operating all the way from the United States or out of Europe would be possible, as would aircraft operating out of bases in the Persian Gulf area.

CBS News is reporting that between 12,000 and 20,000 people have been killed so far in Iran. The Iranian Health Ministry puts the number of dead at 3,000 which they say includes "hundreds" of security officers. The Health Ministry puts the blame on "terrorists".

Israeli media (channel 12) is reporting that Israeli alert levels and security at Israeli embassies around the world is being raised because American military action against Iran is no longer a question of 'if' but 'when'. Additional Israeli air defense missile batteries are being set up. But even the Israelis seem to be in the dark regarding the details of what the US proposes to do. Certainly if they know, it isn't leaking.

President Trump entered into an emergency meeting at the White House about an hour ago. Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of War Hegseth, CIA Director Ratcliffe, DNI Gabbard, Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine, and VP Vance are all at the White House.

Once the Mullahs’ regime gets kicked out, how long after will the Iranians be wanting the US to leave? After Trump’s reign or earlier?

The US doesn't want to have a presence there at all. We'd much rather the UN, Israel, etc. do any needed oversight.

It appears that Iran is using a variety of military grade methods to jam Starlink in Iran.

One is GPS jamming. Starlink uses GPS to help aim its beams precisely. The answer to this would be to go back to Starlink's original method of going without GPS based only on the orbital elements of the satellites. This would reduce the bandwidth of the signals because they would no longer be as precisely aimed. But it would make GPS jamming ineffective.

A longer term fix would be to use the Starlink satellite constellation as its own GPS system. SpaceX proposed doing this to the FCC back during the Biden regime, but never got approval. It would be much harder for the Iranians to jam the Starlink constellation of thousands of satellites all putting out position data, than it is today's GPS system with a much smaller number of satellites. Unfortunately, it might not be possible with today's Starlink hardware/software, though that isn't certain.

Another method the Iranians are using is jamming the frequencies used by all Starlink transceivers. This is costly for the IRGC because it requires lots of jammers in relatively close proximity to the transceivers. They appear to have placed the jammers in drones that fly patterns over Iranian cities.

Interestingly, the Ukrainians have invented a variety of methods to fight this kind of jamming. One is to place the Starlink transcievers in what amounts to a cylindrical Faraday cage. The transceiver can still 'see' a cone of the sky above the open end of the cylinder, but jamming signals from any distance away are screened out. The Ukrainians have found that this works with Starlink jammers more than 500 meters away.

It's also possible in principle to program the Starlink transcievers to ignore jamming signals coming from an angle to the antenna that's significantly different than the angle of the Starlink satellite that it is communicating with. Starlink ground transceivers use flat phased array antennas that can move their beams to point in different directions electronically without the physical antenna moving at all. They do this by tiny timing differences between emission of different sides of the antenna. (See the graphic below for an intuitive idea of how it works.) That means that their electronics is very sensitive to these tiny time delays since they use them to point the beam. So if a jammer signal from some distance away is coming in at an angle significantly different than the angle of the Starlink satellite above, the electronics should detect that and potentially be programmed to null it out.

Finally, the IRGC is listening for the distinctive uplink signal frequencies put out by Starlink transceivers. These are almost like homing beacons for the regime forces. The Iranian dissidents are countering this by 'shoot and scoot' methods, by communicating only briefly with the satellites and then immediately moving their Starlink to a different location, in hopes that when the Revolutionary Guards arrive at where they used to be, they are long gone.

Most of these methods that the Iranians are using are well understood by SpaceX engineers and we can assume that safeguards are built into the military-grade Starshield satellites being produced for the US Space Force. Starlink, on the other hand, was designed as a civilian communications system and doesn't include built in anti-jamming measures.

The Pentagon has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group, which is currently in the South China Sea west of the Philippines, to head to the Middle East. It's accompanied by three Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers and perhaps a nuclear submarine. It will take them 7 to 10 days to get into position in the northwest Indian Ocean.

In addition, two additional large aircraft carriers and two small ones are underway. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is headed east across the Atlantic (headed for the Mediterranean and Suez?) and the USS George H.W. Bush is headed west across the Pacific along with two smaller aircraft carriers, the USS Boxer and the USS Makin Island. It's unknown where these latter ships are headed or what their mission is. It might just be training exercises or rotations of ships already deployed to the Far East.

Reports are coming in that the United States has requested a United Nations Security Council meeting scheduled for 3 PM Eastern time. The topic will be Iran.

Things have quieted down, perhaps temporarily. The huge demonstrations in Iran have seemingly ended, as has the shooting in the streets.

Here's what's been happening with the US Air Force Air Mobility Command in the Middle East the last couple of days. Quite a bit of C-17 traffic, but not exactly evidence of a big buildup either. The two flights from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are interesting, since Creech is the main USAF drone base. One flew to Muwaffaq Air Base in Jordan, the other seems to have stopped over in Prestwick Scotland UK, with its ultimate destination unknown.

Today there were definite signs of movement.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group passed Singapore today and is headed north up the Straits of Malacca into the Indian Ocean.

And there was a movement of 12 US Air Force F-15E's from RAF Lakenheath in England towards an undisclosed location in the Middle East, believed to be Muwaffaq air base in Jordan. (Actually 11 flew all the way, since one diverted to Chania in Greece, apparently for technical reasons.)

This is said to bring the total number of F-15E's in the CENTCOM area of responsibility to 35.

Forced nudity, unknown injections: Iranians pay heavy price for defying Khamenei
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/ir...2026-01-20

EXCERPT: According to a report by the UK-based Daily Express, Iranian detainees have described horrifying abuse in custody.

A source close to a jailed protester's family told the British tabloid that prisoners were forced by officials to strip naked in prison courtyards and left exposed in freezing conditions. The Iranian prison officers sprayed prisoners with cold water using a hose, said the source.

Even more disturbing were claims of an unexplained medical procedure. The source added that several "detainees were injected with substances that were not explained or identified by prison staff," reported the Daily Express. What followed Iran's nationwide internet blackout on January 8 is coming into light now.

According to a report in the Iran International, evidence emerging through rare phone calls, Starlink messages, and smuggled footage points to mass killings across cities, towns, and even villages. Days after the internet blockade, the Khamenei regime used Chinese or Russian military-grade jammers to disrupt Starlink. Then the security personnel of the regime raided homes to seize communication equipment to hide the mass killings in Iran.

But, the government and its loyalists communicated through a protected "whitelist" network as they brutally suppressed the protests, raging at over 300 locations.

In a short message sent from Tehran using Starlink, one resident said the situation was so dire that "every person is reporting the death of a family member, relative, neighbour, or friend", adding, "This is not an exaggeration," reported the Iran International.

Another account described how "the air was filled with the smell of blood in Tajrish and Narmak", as authorities washed streets with municipal water tankers meant for the horticulture department.

In some cases, families said they were asked to pay for the bullets used to kill their relatives. In others, they were pressured to falsely declare the dead as Basij militia. This could be a ploy to show a higher number of security personnel being killed during the unrest for which the Iranian regime has blamed Israel and the US.

"Two or three people were killed in every alley," a witness told the BBC last week.

The death toll from Iran's protests has climbed to 4,029, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). The organisation said 26,015 people had been arrested, while at least 5,811 others sustained serious injuries during the anti-Khamenei protests.

The Iran International, however, reported that as many as 12,000 people might have been killed. American broadcaster CBS News, citing two sources including one inside Iran, suggested the toll could be as high as 20,000.

The Iranian regime of Khamenei labelled the protestors "mohareb", meaning one who wages war against God. The charge carries the death penalty. Khamenei blamed the protests on what he called US- and Israel-linked "terrorists and rioters". Iran's judiciary, too, echoed the line, signalling mass executions were a real possibility.

Arrested during the anti-Khamenei protests, 26-year-old Iranian shopkeeper Erfan Soltani was reportedly handed a death sentence on charges of mohareb, and his execution was scheduled for January 14. The hanging was later postponed after global pressure, coinciding with threats from US President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, officials of the Khamenei regime claimed protesters killed hundreds of security personnel.

While the protests have subsided in Iran, it is now that the scale of repression is becoming impossible to hide. The reports of protesters being made to go nude amid freezing conditions and injected with unknown substances, to mass graves and forced confessions, might be just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath might be of an unimaginable scale.