Amid a sweeping crackdown on anti-government protests, Iranians are facing the most severe communications blackout on record — and the United States is signaling that restoring internet access is a priority as the White House weighs a series of potential military options targeting the regime.

On Jan. 12, US President Donald Trump spoke to Elon Musk about providing his Starlink satellite internet service to the Iranian people, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters, the same day that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was scheduled to visit a SpaceX facility in Texas. Starlink, which is operated by SpaceX, has been used by Iranians during past unrest.

For now, Musk’s satellite internet service is one of the few remaining options for Iranians seeking to get around the blackout, which began Jan. 8 — but even Starlink can only do so much in face of Tehran’s increasingly sophisticated system of digital repression. Bringing the country back online more broadly is virtually impossible currently. “There’s no way to restore all the connectivity that the government took down,” Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network intelligence platform Kentik, told Al-Monitor. “There’s no cheat to get around providing service to 90 million people. It’s down until the government turns it back on again.”

What happened: Iran has gone almost entirely offline since protests over economic woes escalated into broader demonstrations against the country's clerical rulers. Internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported that as of Jan. 12, the outage had surpassed 96 hours, with fixed-line internet, mobile data and calls disabled nationwide, severely limiting reporting on civilian casualties and arrests. NetBlocks first detected disruptions on Jan. 8, beginning in the western city of Kermanshah before spreading countrywide.