The US Can Put People on the Moon. Why Can’t It Get Iranians Online?

What could they do that they’re not doing?

I mean, look, I think the silly idea is to activate and drop a lot of Starlink terminals on Iran. Well, that’d be fun. I would support a contract, you know, a US government contract to do that, because it would cost less than a couple of these missiles. And we own the airspace at this point. You know, they don’t have air defenses. I think every cell phone, every smartphone produced after 2020 or 2021 has the ability to connect to satellite internet.

It requires flipping switches. To do that, we require an act of Congress or an executive order, and probably some guarantees to cellular providers that if you provide cellular access to Iran, we’re not gonna sanction you. We’re not gonna enforce this.

Do you have any educated guess or informed hypothesis about why these very simple switches are not being flipped?

I just don’t think it’s on people’s radar screens …

That you should connect a country of how many people? Ninety-three million people back on the internet?

One, I think it’s not necessarily on their radar screens. Two, not a priority because I think if the right people knew about it, they’d do it today.

Well, hopefully someone’s listening. I mean, it seems exceedingly obvious.

It’s pretty obvious, right? And it’s one of these things where we put people on the moon, right? We’ve figured out a lot of much more complex challenges.

This is a country of 93 million people. The smartphone penetration is incredibly high. People use these things, right? It’s kind of an obvious piece of the puzzle that hasn’t been put in place yet.

What are we all missing in all the talk about the strait and gas prices? What are we missing about those 93 million people?

None of us are immune to rising costs and how that impacts our lives.

Of course.

But it is a very minor—I don’t want to say “inconvenience,” because I know it’s more than that—but it’s minor in comparison with the matters of life and death and liberty that these people are faced with on a daily basis. I have so many instances of Iranians stepping forward and saying, “Hey, well, look, we want to connect with the outside world. We want to be able to study in your universities. We want to be able to learn from your institutions. We want you to come and invest in our country.”

Actually, the regime even courts foreign investment, and, you know, I would say, “Hey, foreign company, don’t send your staff there until they make some guarantees that they’re not gonna take people hostage,” because they do that all the time.

So it’s a very complicated situation because there is not a good guy in this story. The good guy is the people of Iran. The United States of America, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Israel, none of those three entities have the interests of the people of Iran in their agenda. And I defy you to show me otherwise.