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U.S. SATELLITE FEEDS TO IRAN JAMMED
Jamming
signals are coming from Cuba, sources say
By
Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS PRODUCER
MsNbc
La Nueva Cuba
Julio 12, 2003
U.S. government
officials as well as Iranian Americans and communications satellite
operators confirm that all U.S.-based satellite broadcasts to Iran
are being jammed out of Cuba, one of Iran’s major allies and
a nation increasingly dependent on Iranian oil.
“WE ARE well aware of the jamming,” said one senior U.S.
official familiar with intelligence on the matter. He said that
it was almost certainly done as part of an effort by the Iranian
government to eliminate dissent during a week of renewed student
protests and the inauguration of Voice of America’s Farsi-language
television programming to Iran.
Asked if the jamming were being done out of Cuba, the official would
only say that it was “within the realm of possibility.”
Late Friday, however, three sources associated with the broadcast
services confirmed that Loral Skynet, the operator of the Telstar-12
satellite used by the broadcasters, had determined the jamming was
probably emanating from “the vicinity of Havana, Cuba.”
One of the sources said that Loral, working with transmitter location
expert TLS Inc. of Chantilly, Va., had further fixed the location
as “20 miles outside of Havana.” Cuba’s main electronic
eavesdropping base, at Bejucal, is about 20 miles outside of the
Cuban capital. The base, built for Cuba by the Russians in the early
1990’s, monitors and intercepts satellite communications.
Iran and Cuba have had increasingly close relations over the past
several years with Iran supplying Cuba with oil. Cuba has extensive
jamming experience, regularly interfering with the signal of the
U.S. government-financed TV Marti.
Over the past
several months, private Iranian-American groups have begun increasing
their broadcasts into Iran using Telstar-12, a communications satellite
over the eastern Atlantic. All are trying to encourage protests
against the regime in Tehran.
Iranians, using small satellite dishes, have been able to receive
the broadcast, whose mix of news, entertainment and exhortations
to protest have gained a large audience, particularly in Tehran.
Then on Sunday, the Voice of America began its Farsi-language broadcasts.
Not long afterward, the jamming began.
Over the past few days — as the fourth anniversary of the country’s
most widespread protests approached — the broadcasts have been
jammed, not in Iran but in the Americas, according to officials
and investigators.
Iranian students cancel protests
The Farsi language broadcasts, by the Los Angeles-based ParsTV,
Azadi Television and Appadana TV, are uplinked in the US via Telstar-5,
which is over the United States. They are then turned around at
the Washington International Teleport in Alexandria, Va., where
they are joined by the VOA broadcast and uplinked again to Telstar-12
over the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
It is the Telstar-12 uplink that is being jammed, say investigators
for companies working with the broadcasters, cutting off broadcasts
not only in Iran but in Europe and the rest of the Middle East as
well. The jamming could emanate from anywhere within the satellite’s
uplink footprint, which covers all the Eastern United States, the
Caribbean and South America, say investigators. In the past, the
Iranian government, using high-power transmitters on towers in cities
such as Tehran have been able to jam it locally. The fact that TV
viewers elsewhere can’t see it was the first hint that the
jamming was happening on this side of the Atlantic.
Loral,
which operates the satellite, declined comment on what it is doing
in response. But in a letter that Loral Skynet’s Peggy Courter
sent to Atlanta DTH, which manages the satellite services for Azadi,
was quite clear in laying out its findings. The interference, it
reported, had begun at 5:35 p.m. EDT on July 5, which was just after
midnight in Tehran and shortly after the VOA began its broadcasts.
After running a series of tests, wrote Courter, “Skynet concluded
the interference was caused by a third party” and asked TLS
to investigate. TLS was able to find the “probable source of
the interference” on Friday afternoon, identifying it as Havana.
“The jamming appears to be linked to the anniversary of the
student uprisings,” said one investigator for a company working
with the broadcasters who preferred to remain anonymous. “It’s
malicious, not a prank. For us, it began yesterday, continues today.
Not only are the Iranian signals jammed, but those of other nearby
broadcasters are as well. We have a Chinese client who is being
jammed.
Newsweek: Tehran crackdown
“There
are ways of determining the location of the interference,”
he added. “It is complex and time-consuming. Basically, you
look at minimal interference other nearby satellites are experiencing
and then you triangulate.”
As for the actual jamming, its simply a matter of aiming a strong
signal at the uplink transponder on the satellite and overwhelming
the Farsi language broadcasters’ signals.
Said the investigator: “You need a dish, some power, not too
much. You put up a test pattern ... and do a sweep and find the
transponder on the satellite you want to jam. It could even be smaller
than the standard 6-meter dish. It could be a small dish with a
lot of power.”
BBC’s Media Monitoring Service, which provides capsules of
various foreign TV broadcasts for subscribers, described the jamming
as “a mysterious, interfering signal, rendering the broadcasts
unwatchable.”
Pushing Iran risks a backlash
It reported
problems began on Sunday, the day VOA began its broadcast, with
the worst jamming taking place over the past two days with the jamming
extending to all the Farsi-language broadcasts emanating from the
United States.
Late Wednesday, monitors reported that jamming had become sporadic.
The anniversary of the student demonstrations, the largest since
the fall of the shah in 1979, was Wednesday.
The senior U.S. official said the Iranian government “is concerned
that these broadcasts have encouraged the student demonstrations
and this is one way to stop that encouragement.”
*Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News, based
in New York.
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