China’s advanced surveillance tech helped Iran to construct a near-total control system—only for it to collapse under U.S. intervention during recent unrest.

By Zineb Riboua, published via Substack

Zineb Riboua is a researcher and scholar for the Hudson Institute think tank.

In Brief by Probe International

America didn’t just expose the system; it actively dismantled the architecture that promised eternal control.

Iran’s internet initially threatened the country’s authoritarian control by enabling rapid coordination and exposure of abuses, as evidenced by the 2009 Green Movement, which overwhelmed Iran’s old tools. But China provided the fix: scalable, integrated surveillance sold as “smart-city” upgrades.

Learning from the 2009 protests, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took control of the country’s telecom infrastructure by acquiring stakes in carriers and establishing parallel intelligence networks, while China provided critical technology through companies like ZTE and Huawei for deep packet inspection, real-time monitoring, censorship, and location tracking, as well as Tiandy for facial recognition and behavioral anomaly detection in public spaces. Together, they developed a near-complete internet kill switch, costing hundreds of millions, to isolate the nation during crises.

After the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, cameras replaced the visible morality police for hijab enforcement, with high-level ties including police chief visits to Beijing and training programs that exported China’s “stability-maintenance” model. Initially, this system functioned effectively during the massive January 2026 uprising, which erupted in late 2025 due to economic collapse and calls for regime change, as authorities imposed blackouts, utilized predictive tools for arrests, and killed thousands—estimates range from thousands to over 30,000 during brutal crackdowns, particularly on January 8–9.

The regime’s control, however, was shattered by the U.S.-smuggled ~6,000 Starlink terminals, a covert State Department operation involving President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which bypassed the terrestrial networks controlled by China and Iran. The regime’s jamming efforts could not scale without disrupting its own operations, and leaked footage of atrocities raised the cost of repression, leading to a breakdown of the illusion of total visibility as people began using Starlink openly without immediate punishment, eroding their self-censorship.

Key failures:

• No physical monopoly on connectivity (satellites evade ground control)
• Data overload without actionable response capacity post-chaos
• Behavioral collapse: once the “omnipresent” myth broke, compliance dissolved

This matters globally, argues author Zineb Riboua: China supplies similar tech to 150+ countries. Iran’s case, she asserts, disproves Beijing’s claim of unassailable surveillance superiority. Meanwhile, the ongoing U.S. “Operation Epic Fury” (military campaign targeting IRGC command, connectivity nodes) and licenses enabling American tech entry further undermine it. America, Riboua concludes, didn’t just expose the system; it actively dismantled the architecture that promised eternal control.

Read the full essay by this author here.