Damon Wilson, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was interrupted by a member of Congress during a House oversight hearing on February 24 after revealing that his agency “began supporting the deployment [and] operation of about 200 Starlinks early on” amid the violence which swept through Iran last month.
Before he could finish the sentence, he was cut off by the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Rep. Lois Frankel, who told Wilson: “You know what, I’m going to interrupt you – we’d better not talk about it.”
Wilson’s comments had been prompted by a question from Frankel, who requested details of what appears to be a new and apparently secret initiative by the State Department to provide Starlink terminals to Iranians.
Wilson appeared to take credit for both the recent unrest in Iran and subsequent media framing of the chaos. “What we’re seeing today, the Endowment has been making investments over years that have ensured that there have been secure communications, including Starlinks… that allowed information to go both in and out of the country,” he stated.
According to the New York Times, the Elon Musk-produced internet systems had been smuggled into the country by a “ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers [who] pierced Iran’s digital barricades.” It is clear now that the NED was at least partly responsible for funding and coordinating that network.
With Starlink emerging as a key weapon in the information war waged against Iran, it’s unclear how anti-government actors have managed to smuggle the devices into the country. But a recent incident in which a senior Dutch diplomat was caught trying to sneak multiple Starlink units and satellite phones through security at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Airport gives a hint.
The National Endowment for Democracy was founded in 1982 under the auspices of then-CIA Director William Casey to topple socialist and independent governments through the direct sponsorship of NGO’s, media organizations and political parties. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein said of the Endowment’s work in 1991.
Despite its mission of promoting transparency and “fundamental freedoms” abroad, the NED is now a dark money group which conceals the names of its local partners under a “duty of care” policy announced in 2025. During his congressional testimony this February, Wilson insisted the policy was necessary for the security of grantees on the ground.
The NED’s work to smuggle Starlink terminals into Iran is therefore a covert operation aimed at promoting unrest. And according to Wilson, it is now a key part of the Endowment’s most aggressive initiative.
Iran “has been a huge priority for the Endowment. Iran has been, since I arrived at the Endowment, our fastest-growing program,” Wilson told Frankel.
“It’s now one of our largest programs globally, that involves both direct partners – Iranian groups – as well as our core institutes.”
Wilson said his organization was instrumental in bringing about the 2002 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, which saw Iranians initially mobilize against the Islamic Republic’s mandatory hijab law before the protests deteriorated into violent riots.
“If you think about the impact of our work in Iran, the reason the Women, Life, Freedom movement began with a simple headscarf – that story of Mahsa Amini could have been lost as a regional story in Iran. But NED partners helped cover that story, get it out to the world, and get it back into Iran,” Wilson said, referring to the Iranian Kurdish woman who died in police custody from an apparent medical condition after being detained for violating the mandatory hijab law.
Violent regime change riots erupted again this January 8 and 9 across Iran, resulting in the burning of police stations, hundreds of mosques and worship sites, government buildings, marketplaces and lethal mob assaults on unarmed guards as well as police officers. The violence only stopped when Iranian security services imposed an internet blackout and neutralized thousands of Starlink terminals.
The Iranian government has provided the names and identification numbers of over 3000 citizens who were killed during the two days of rioting. But as The Grayzone reported, the NED-funded NGO, Human Rights Activists in Iran, initially claimed the death toll was over twice as high.
Now, as mainstream outlets like The Guardian cite dubious monarchist sources to exaggerate the death toll even further, the NED’s Wilson has revealed that his organization is working with “human rights networks” to “provide international media and other credible sources of what’s happened.”
These US-funded groups were involved in “documenting 17,000 deaths,” Wilson claimed, adding that “upwards, potentially of 30,000, remain under review by our partners right now.” As The Grayzone reported, the claim that Iran killed 30,000 people in just two nights originated with an opposition activist closely tied to the self-styled ‘crown prince’ Reza Pahlavi, heir to Iran’s ousted yet still CIA-tied monarchy.
Asked by Frankel whether he had any recommendations about “hard power” options for the US against Iran, Wilson insisted that his role was not to provide policy advice. He was much more comfortable boasting about NED’s role in shaping anti-Iran media narratives, such as the one blaming the country’s leadership for persistent drought conditions:
“Part of what we see manifesting is a response that our partners have helped tell the Iranian people the story, that the regime has squandered their own resources on supporting proxies throughout the Middle East, to the point where they cannot manage their own water supplies for Tehran. And these stories have not just emerged, they are ones that have been covered, documented, and shared with the Iranian people consistently through our work.”
Elsewhere in his testimony, Wilson appeared to take credit for the election of a right-wing government in Bolivia – and that his NED did so to ensure US control over the country’s mineral wealth: “In Bolivia,” he declared, “our partners prevented lithium from falling under Moscow’s control.”
Wilson also revealed that NED is funding and training media in Nicaragua with an eye on undermining the country’s socialist-oriented Sandinista government. “We have an incredible suite of Nicaraguan journalists with coverage networks inside the country,” he boasted.
Rep. Frankel closed the session by suggesting that the US government was mirroring many of the repressive tactics the NED condemned abroad: “Political enemies being imprisoned by autocratic leaders. Masked men going into homes and terrorizing people. Certainly can understand why so many people are fleeing their countries. Unfortunately, it sounds very sad, because it sounds like the story that’s going on here.”
Reprinted with permission from The Grayzone.
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