Reuters : Well before the throttling this month of Ukraine’s military access to Elon Musk’s satellite communications system, the Biden and Trump administrations had several times asked SpaceX to turn its Starlink service on or off in various countries, according to six former senior US officials familiar with the matter.
During the presidency of Joe Biden, the requests included switching off the service to prevent Iranian proxy militias in Yemen and Lebanon from using Starlink to communicate, and activating the service to provide internet access inside Iran and in Ukraine to support its military, said four of the former officials.
The Biden-era and Trump requests to Musk show a close relationship in which US administrations rely to an unprecedented degree on a private-sector company to help implement foreign policy.
The recent limits on Ukraine, despite being a US ally, have also rattled officials in Europe, some of whom argue that Europe must develop its own military satellite communications capabilities because no viable short-term alternative currently exists.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week that his country’s access to Starshield, the military version of the Starlink system, had been intentionally limited, interfering with the performance of the country’s military drones. He also said the speeds were reduced for Starlink, which Ukraine uses for some military activities including defense against Russian missile attacks.Musk’s role as the strong-willed CEO of a company with outsized influence over US national security has at times raised questions over who is making decisions about SpaceX’s satellite services.
The SpaceX CEO is “supposed to be a business executive, with government contracts, and he’s essentially making huge foreign policy decisions,” said Armand Musey, president of Summit Ridge Group, a satellite industry consultancy.
“He’s sufficiently ambiguous of a person that you don’t know if his decisions are sort of his personal quirks, or it’s because there’s an influence elsewhere that’s impacting him,” Musey said.
In previous years, Musk has moved to limit Ukraine’s access to Starlink. In 2022, according to Reuters reporting, Musk ordered SpaceX personnel to cut Starlink coverage in areas Ukraine was trying to retake, a move that surprised White House officials.
Musk has said publicly that he refused a 2022 Ukrainian request to activate his satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a major act of war.
The Biden administration at times relied on Musk to help implement policy, five of the former officials said.Biden officials coordinated with SpaceX to thwart US adversaries by cutting the service, and to help allies by expanding Starlink’s availability, they said.
They added that discussions between the government and SpaceX, which usually included Pentagon and White House officials, often focused on preventing groups such as the Iranian-linked Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon from using Starlink terminals.
Biden officials several times shared intelligence with SpaceX that indicated that the Houthis and Hezbollah were using diverted Starlink terminals — hardware that made its way to the militants through intermediaries.
In October 2023, during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, intelligence officials told the White House that individuals linked to Hezbollah could have gained access to Starlink terminals. Officials had similar concerns about the Houthis in Yemen in 2024 during a US air campaign against the Iran-linked group, five of the officials said.
In both cases, the administration contacted SpaceX and asked it to identify the terminals and shut them off. At least some of the terminals were deactivated, said two of the officials.
In a 2024 submission to the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, SpaceX said it works closely with US government agencies to secure export authorizations where required and to safeguard technology in support of US national security objectives and foreign policy goals.
Soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Biden officials pushed SpaceX to expand Starlink use for the Ukrainian military, said two of the former officials.
In a separate instance, the Biden administration asked SpaceX to turn on Starlink in Iran during a protest movement launched in September 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, according to one of the former officials.
Starlink terminals were moved into the country with the help of the administration, said the official, who declined to say how many were transferred.
The Trump administration took a similar step earlier this year and discussed with Musk and SpaceX getting Starlink terminals into Iran and activated following US-Israeli strikes in the country in June 2025 and again in February 2026, a former senior Trump official and a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Neither the Trump administration nor SpaceX has publicly confirmed that those terminals were turned on. The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February that the US government had sent thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran. Iran’s delegation to the UN did not respond to a request for comment.
