Iran’s latest protest wave is colliding with a surveillance machine that is no longer purely domestic. A Chinese video technology giant, Tiandy, has become a crucial supplier of tools that help Iranian authorities identify, track, and ultimately detain demonstrators. The result is a protest landscape where cameras, algorithms, and imported hardware shape who dares to step into the street and who disappears afterward.
At the same time, a parallel ecosystem of smuggled devices and satellite links is keeping a fragile window to the outside world open, even as the state tightens its grip. The clash between these two systems, one built on Chinese-made surveillance and the other on illicit connectivity, is defining the stakes for Iranian Protesters who now live with the knowledge that, as one of them put it, “Everything is under surveillance.”
The rise of Tiandy in Iran’s security state
Iran has spent years building a dense network of CCTV cameras and monitoring centers, but the partnership with Tiandy has given that system a sharper edge. Tiandy surveillance systems have strengthened efforts by Iranian security services to identify protesters during current and past unrest, integrating high resolution video, facial recognition, and centralized control rooms that allow security forces to scan crowds for familiar faces and repeat participants. According to detailed reporting on Tiandy, these systems are not theoretical pilot projects but operational tools that Iranian agencies are already using to hunt people who once might have been anonymous in a crowd.
The relationship is not limited to off the shelf cameras. Tiandy has also provided Iran’s IRGC with the technology that underpins more advanced analytics, according to sanctions disclosures that describe how the company’s products were routed into sensitive security units. When The Commerce Department moved to restrict American exports to Tiandy, it cited the firm’s role in supplying Iran with equipment that Washington believes threaten the country’s security and enable repression. Those restrictions, detailed in a U.S. blacklist of the Chinese supplier, underscore how deeply Tiandy is now woven into Iran’s internal security architecture and how central its tools have become to the state’s ability to catch protesters after the streets have emptied, as documented in sanctions notices on IRGC links.
Sanctions, middlemen, and the Tiandy supply chain
International pressure has tried to choke off this flow of surveillance technology, but the supply chain into Iran is more resilient than it looks. The United States on Thursday blacklisted a Chinese video surveillance equipment maker, describing Tiandy as a Chinese company whose technology was being sold into Iran despite existing export controls. That move, recorded in U.S. trade and security documents, was meant to signal that Washington would not tolerate Chinese firms arming Tehran with tools that can be used against peaceful Iranian protesters, a concern that has grown as images of crackdowns have circulated abroad through whatever channels remain open, as reflected in the broader sanctions notice on The United States blacklist.
Europe has targeted the local intermediaries that keep Tiandy’s products flowing into the country. As the only official representative of Tiandy in Iran, Radi Vira Tejarat Company imports and sells surveillance equipment to government entities, acting as a bridge between Chinese factories and Iranian security agencies. EU sanctions on this distributor describe Radi Vira Tejarat Company as a key conduit for cameras, servers, and software that end up in the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran, effectively making the firm an extension of Tiandy’s presence on the ground. By naming Radi Vira Tejarat Company directly, European authorities have acknowledged that cutting off the hardware alone is not enough; the network of middlemen inside Iran must also be confronted, as detailed in measures targeting the company’s role as Tiandy’s representative in Iran.
How Chinese surveillance tech shapes Iran’s crackdown
On the streets, the impact of this imported technology is visible in the way protests are policed and punished. Protesters were heavily surveilled with CCTV cameras on the streets, and even those who tried to avoid main squares found themselves under watch by smaller, newly installed units that fed into centralized monitoring hubs. Accounts from Iranian Protesters describe a sense that Everything is under surveillance, a phrase that captures how the state’s camera network has expanded from major intersections to side streets, metro stations, and even the approaches to university campuses, as detailed in reporting on the spread of CCTV coverage.
Iran’s security forces have paired these cameras with a decades-long push to nationalize the country’s internet infrastructure, a strategy that has made it easier to combine physical surveillance with digital tracking. The country’s effort to build a domestic internet, accelerated by intensifying international sanctions, has given authorities more control over which platforms are accessible and how data flows in and out of the country. When protests erupt, that control allows the state to slow or cut connectivity while still keeping its own systems online, a dual advantage that makes it harder for demonstrators to coordinate and easier for security agencies to mine domestic platforms for clues about organizers, as described in analyses of the country’s national network push.
Global backlash against Tiandy’s dual-use footprint
The controversy around Tiandy’s role in Iran is sharpened by the company’s record at home in China. The Biden administration has described China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims as genocide, accusing Beijing of carrying out a campaign of mass detention, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance in Xinjiang. Tiandy has been linked to that domestic apparatus through contracts and deployments that place its cameras and software in facilities where Uyghur Muslims are monitored, a connection that has raised alarms about how the same technology might be used when exported to partners like Iran, as highlighted in U.S. criticism of Beijing of abuses.
For Western governments, Tiandy’s footprint in both Xinjiang and Iran illustrates the challenge of dual-use technology that can be marketed as urban management or crime prevention but deployed against peaceful Iranian protesters. The Commerce Department’s decision to target Tiandy, and the EU’s move against Radi Vira Tejarat Company, reflect a growing consensus that surveillance exports must be treated like other sensitive technologies that can empower authoritarian regimes. Yet sanctions alone have not dismantled the networks that move this equipment, and Iran’s continued reliance on Chinese suppliers shows how demand for such tools persists even under intense scrutiny, as seen in the detailed descriptions of how Tiandy surveillance systems have strengthened Iranian security services in Jan.
Smuggled tech, Starlink, and the fight to stay connected
Against this backdrop of expanding surveillance, a quieter ecosystem of resistance has emerged around connectivity. They hold Iran’s last tenuous link to the outside world, a phrase used to describe the smugglers and technicians who bring in banned devices, encrypted routers, and satellite terminals that allow activists to bypass state controls. Very little information, at least electronically, appears to be leaving the country when the authorities clamp down, so these clandestine networks have become essential for getting videos, testimonies, and documentation of abuses out to foreign audiences, even as those involved risk sentences of up to 10 years in prison for their role in keeping Iran online, as detailed in accounts of the ecosystem of smuggled tech in Iran.
Newer tools like satellite internet have added another layer to this struggle. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna that requires a line of sight to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open or on rooftops where they can be seen and potentially targeted. Iranian authorities have tried to jam or localize these signals, but the decentralized nature of satellite links makes it harder to block Starlink more broadly, especially when terminals are smuggled in small numbers and shared among trusted circles. For protesters, a single working dish can mean the difference between a blackout and the ability to upload footage of a crackdown, a reality that has turned Starlink into a symbol of both hope and risk, as described in reports on how Subscribers operate.
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