Iran has publicly threatened to attack infrastructure linked to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink across the Middle East, according to reports carried by Iranian state-aligned media on Thursday, amid escalating military confrontation with the United States.
For context, tensions between Iran and the US have been spiralling after what had been billed, somewhat hopefully, as a fragile ceasefire. That truce has largely collapsed under a barrage of tit-for-tat strikes. On Wednesday night, US forces fired Tomahawk missiles and deployed fighter jets in a new round of attacks, prompting furious rhetoric from Tehran and a flurry of anxious diplomatic phone calls, including, according to Fox News, direct contact between senior Iranian officials and Donald Trump, urging him to halt the strikes.
Iran Links Elon Musk’s Starlink To ‘War Crimes’
The latest threat against Elon Musk was reported by Fars, a news agency with close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Citing a ‘well-informed source’, it said Tehran now considers SpaceX and Starlink assets in the region to be legitimate military targets, alleging they have been used by the US and Israeli armed forces.
According to the source, the US military, aided by companies linked to Musk, has committed war crimes in Iran, including an attack on water infrastructure in the country’s south. On that basis, the Islamic Republic claims it ‘reserves the right’ to strike any facilities associated with Musk’s holdings in the Middle East and in what it terms the ‘occupied territories’.
None of these allegations has been independently verified, and neither SpaceX nor the US military has publicly confirmed operational reliance on Starlink in this particular conflict. The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the value of commercial satellite constellations for secure communications more generally, but that is a long way from green-lighting attacks on private infrastructure. Nothing is confirmed yet so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
Iranian media framed Musk as more than just a businessman, repeatedly describing him as a close ally of Trump and highlighting his role in projects like Starship and the launch of satellites used for Earth observation, encrypted communications and secure data transfer. In Tehran’s telling, Musk is not a distant tech figure but part of the US war machine.
Elon Musk, Starlink And A Blurred Line Between Civilians And Combatants
The news came after the US and Israel were reported to have used Musk-operated infrastructure during recent operations, a claim that feeds into a wider anxiety about how commercial technology is bleeding into warfare. Starlink terminals have been used in other conflict zones, and that precedent clearly haunts officials in Tehran.
The implication is stark. If Iran treats Starlink dishes or ground stations as fair game, it sets a precedent for states going after privately owned networks whenever they believe those networks give an enemy an edge. Put bluntly, the rules of who is a combatant and who is a bystander start to look shaky.
That point was not lost on users of X, Musk’s own social media platform, who spent much of Thursday arguing about whether Tehran’s threat was sabre-rattling or a genuine shift in the rules.
One user, @Anton__Chigurh_, pushed back hard at the idea that Starlink is central to US capabilities, writing: ‘The U.S. military does not rely on them. The military has its own communications satellites. Targeting civilians is a war crime. They just announced they will commit war crimes. And go ahead and use the limited supply of missiles so uselessly. We’ll just take your island and oil.’
Another, @rezzrizz25, focused on the bigger picture, posting: ‘When governments start naming private companies instead of armies, you know the rules of geopolitics have changed.’ It is a slightly glib line, but the unease behind it is real enough.
Trump, China And The Politics Swirling Around Elon Musk
In case you missed it, Musk has not exactly been hovering on the sidelines of this crisis. Since the conflict erupted on 28 February, he has weighed in repeatedly through interviews and on X, at times appearing to test the boundaries of how much influence a single billionaire should have in live foreign policy arguments.
He also surprised many observers by joining Trump on a high-profile trip to China last month. The visit was seen as a public reaffirmation of their partnership after a period of tension linked to Musk’s abrupt exit from the so‑called DOGE leadership role Trump had once publicly backed him for. Whatever the details of that falling-out, the optics of the China trip suggested the pair had decided they still needed each other.
All of this now feeds into the way Iranian officials and commentators talk about Musk. To them, he is not just the Tesla chief or the guy who names rockets after 1990s PC games. He is Trump’s ally, operator of satellites, host of a global online platform and, crucially, someone they allege is helping enable US military action against Iranian targets.
The White House and Pentagon have so far stayed quiet on the specific threat to SpaceX infrastructure, at least in public, and there has been no on-the-record response from Musk himself. Whether that silence is strategic caution or simple disbelief that Tehran would actually fire missiles at commercial assets is, for now, anyone’s guess.
What is clear is that a regional conflict that began with conventional strikes and familiar diplomatic choreography has now nudged into stranger territory, where a Silicon Valley chief executive finds his name on an unofficial target list and social media users are left trying to game out the laws of war in real time. This is the kind of stuff the Geneva Conventions did not really anticipate.
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