United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is announcing a new initiative called Project Constellation to support the people of Iran who fight daily against the Ayatollah and his regime enforcers. The Islamic Republic is confronting a revolution in the name of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ as the brave Iranian people fight against the regime’s corruption, mismanagement, and brutal repression.
To this day, Iranians are engaged in acts of civil disobedience: with women refusing to don the hijab; the burning of government billboards; the graffitiing of walls with anti-regime calls to action; and the cries from the rooftops during the evenings of “Death to Khamenei” and “We don’t want a child-killing regime.” It is only a matter of time before the next round of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests commence, especially with the Morality Police re-emerging on the streets in a renewed crackdown.
Through its issuance of General License D-2, which authorizes an exemption to U.S. sanctions for discrete internet services, the U.S. government has taken action to support the free flow of information to and from the Iranian people. This license is crucial as it helps keep Iranians online amid pervasive efforts of the Islamic Republic to censor and shut down the internet early and often when there is even a hint of protests being planned.
Project Constellation will offer a centralized platform for supporters of the Iranian people around the world to donate funds to send Starlink satellite internet terminals to facilitate communications and to keep them online. UANI believes a vast majority of these systems will make it through smuggling routes into Iran. Of course, given the sensitive nature of these routes, UANI will keep its distribution partners confidential. But based upon the best efforts of our confidential partners, UANI expects to achieve a high rate of Starlink systems successfully smuggled into Iran.
Ensuring online access and the ability to communicate beyond the censorship of the regime is especially critical now in preemptively frontloading Starlink terminals to the Iranian people to guarantee their presence on the ground in advance of the next round of protests, which will inevitably come soon. This will establish their occupancy in safe hands in a proactive, rather than a reactive, manner.
The power of these tools to affect change is palpable. One senior government official said that “at some points, since the regime escalated its internet disruptions in September 2022, 30 million Iranians—nearly one in three—were using U.S.-supported anti-censorship tools.”
Donating Starlink terminals will contribute to this effort to keep Iranians online. It will not only provide internet access to Iranians to enable them to communicate at home and abroad but will also serve as a tool for citizen journalists to document human rights abuses which can then be shared with the international community.
UANI has vetted its distribution partners, who have successfully distributed terminals to at-risk individuals on the ground in Iran, employing methods to minimize any potential harm to these brave Iranians. UANI is confident about their work and will keep their identities confidential for security reasons. Accompanied by comprehensive user training and needed technical and hardware infrastructure, these products will provide the necessary equipment, skills, and knowledge to the Iranian people.
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