When Satellite Data Becomes a Weapon

Last month, Iran’s Tehran Times posted what appeared to be damning satellite proof: a before-and-after image of “American radar,” supposedly “completely destroyed.”

It wasn’t. The image was an AI-manipulated version of a year-old Google Earth shot from Bahrain—wrong location, wrong timeline, fabricated damage. Open source intelligence researchers debunked it within hours matching it to older satellite imagery and identifying identical visual artifacts, down to cars frozen in the same positions.

A small act of disinformation, quickly debunked. But it pointed to a challenge that becomes more difficult during active conflict: The satellite infrastructure that journalists, analysts, pilots, and governments rely on to see conflict clearly in the Gulf is itself becoming contested terrain—delayed, spoofed, withheld, or simply controlled by actors whose interests don’t always align with public access.

The escalation follows rising tensions between the US, Israel, and Iran, with missile and drone activity crossing Gulf airspace and regional infrastructure—including satellites and navigation systems—entering into the conflict.

No Longer Neutral Infrastructure

When satellite data becomes unreliable, control over it becomes a central question.

In the Gulf, satellite infrastructure is largely run by state-backed operators. These rely on geostationary satellites—positioned high above the equator—which are used for activities such as broadcasting, communication and weather forecasting.

In the United Arab Emirates, that includes Space42 for secure communications and Earth observation. Saudi-led Arabsat handles broadcasting and broadband, while Qatar’s Es’hailSat supports regional connectivity. All operate under close government oversight.

Iran is building a parallel system. Its satellites, including Paya (also known as Tolou-3), are part of a broader push to expand surveillance capabilities independently of Western infrastructure. The high-resolution Earth observation satellite was launched from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome.

The market around that infrastructure is growing fast. The Middle East satellite communications sector is valued at more than $4 billion and projected to reach $5.64 billion by 2031, according to one estimate, driven largely by airborne connectivity linked to both commercial aviation and defense demand. Maritime platforms already account for nearly a third of regional revenue.

Access Is the New Bottleneck

Commercial low-Earth orbit fleets like Planet Labs and Maxar operate differently from government-owned systems—and access is the main constraint. Governments receive priority tasking, while newsrooms and NGOs rely on paid subscriptions.

On March 11, Planet Labs announced it would extend delays on imagery of the Middle East by two weeks. The company denied the decision came from any government request, stating instead that it was to “ensure our imagery is not tactically leveraged by adversarial actors to target allied and NATO-partner personnel and civilians.”

Maryam Ishani Thompson, an open source intelligence (OSINT) reporter, tells WIRED Middle East that “the loss of Planet Labs is so harsh because we were getting a fast refresh rate. Even if we turn to Chinese satellites, we don’t get that speed.”

Chinese platforms like MizarVision, a Shanghai-based open source geospatial intelligence provider, have seen increased use since the delays—part of a broader shift in who controls the imagery pipeline. Russia and China are also increasingly sharing satellite access with Iran, meaning the companies that once set the terms of what the world could see are no longer the only ones with eyes on the Gulf.

If You Can’t Verify, You Can’t Challenge the Narrative

Operationally, the consequences are immediate.

Ishani’s verification process depends on historical reference points. The static nature of the Tehran Times image—with cars in identical positions across both frames—was detectable precisely because journalists had recent imagery to compare against. Remove that baseline, and the same image becomes harder to debunk.

“In that opaque space,” Ishani says. “Iran is producing its own false narrative. If we can’t document it and fact-check it, they can continue to create a narrative and sell it to their people.”

Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at nonprofit Secure World Foundation, says that, for most commercially and privately owned satellite companies, the US government is one of their largest customer—creating “a reluctance to upset the US government.”

She adds that self-censorship may be a way to get ahead of regulation. “Companies always like to go for low-hanging fruit. You say, ‘Look, you don’t need to put regulation out on us. We got it.’”

Responsibility for all of this sits in a legal grey area. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty assigns nations the duty to authorize and continually supervise their national actors in space, in theory making the US responsible for companies like SpaceX and Starlink. In practice, it turns figures like Elon Musk into geopolitical actors operating within a framework that wasn’t designed for them.

Kuwait’s Alghanim Industries announced Starlink availability through authorized reseller Sama X this month, with the UAE following shortly after. Originally provided free of charge in Ukraine, Starlink access was later restricted in parts of the conflict, with Reuters reporting that officials were instructed to limit coverage in certain areas. The model has since shifted toward government and military contracts. But a contract with a private individual whose political positions can shift is a fundamentally different kind of security guarantee than one with a state. “If you are providing services or capabilities to combatants in an active military conflict, according to the laws of armed conflict, you are a lawful target,” says Samson.

There is no international body with the authority to dictate what private satellite companies can or cannot do in a conflict zone. What exists instead is a patchwork of commercial contracts, self-regulation, and individual judgment calls.

Impact Reached the Cockpit

The consequences of that vacuum don’t stay abstract for long.

Flightradar24, a widely used flight-tracking platform that aggregates real-time aircraft data from transponders and satellites, reports “a dramatic increase in GPS interference in the region since the start of the war, especially in the southeastern area of the Arabian Peninsula.”

A pilot who regularly flies routes over Gulf Cooperation Council states, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the experience from inside the cockpit. “It usually starts with a message on our FMC,” he says, referring to a flight management computer, “telling us that either our left or right GPS signal is lost.”

For passengers, nothing appears wrong. For the pilot, a cascade of procedures begins.

Once both GPS signals are lost, pilots switch to distance-measuring equipment updating—a backup navigation method that calculates the aircraft’s position by measuring how far it is from multiple ground-based radio beacons, rather than satellites. In effect, the system falls back on older infrastructure that predates GPS.

The trade-off is immediate: They lose access to the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System, a critical onboard safety system that uses GPS data and terrain maps to warn pilots if the aircraft is at risk of flying too close to the ground. GPS spoofing can also corrupt onboard clock timing, introducing another layer of navigational unreliability.

The pilot describes the situation with a matter-of-factness that is perhaps the most unsettling detail of all: “GPS jamming has become pretty standard in the region.” Mitigation procedures were only introduced industry-wide a few years ago, in response to jamming during the Russia-Ukraine war. They are now routine over the Gulf, he says.

The satellite infrastructure overhead