For Iran, this is an extitential moment for an ancient culture, and therefor descisiins are bieng made based on what consitutes any part of that threat, and since they have a much greater technical capacity than say, Afganistan, they are doing a flex on the internet, perhaps heading towards something like a cross between the great firewall and minitell. And then there is the simple reality of the internet as a whole bieng a putrid swamp that the rest of the 'free' world is trying to grapple with anyway, and it is very very difficult to point to how loosing access to the internet is realy that bad. If they can , along with many other countrys, solve banking and business, and ditch the swarm of media/porn/extreamist/gambling shit shows, then you can count on that bieng a goal that many people here will get on board with, rather than find fault in, which goes a long way to explaining the exceptionaly tepid response to the internet going down there, in fact the response here borders on the the whistfull.

Satellite tech like Starlinks need either very visible dishes, or in Starlink's case, local ground stations, to operate. I'm sure there are Iranian ground stations though, just that they're configured to mine crypto or obscure hacking attempts by government-backed groups.