Planet Labs to Withhold High-Resolution Iran War Imagery After U.S. Request

On the morning of April 4, clients of Planet Labs opened an email that signaled a sharp turn in how the world will see one of its most volatile conflicts.

Effective immediately, the California-based satellite imaging company said it would “indefinitely withhold” high-resolution pictures of Iran and much of the surrounding Middle East. The change, the company told customers, was being made “following a request from the U.S. government.”

The message said that recent and future images of what Planet called “sensitive conflict areas” would no longer appear in its standard commercial feeds. Instead, access would be placed under a “managed distribution” system, with new imagery released only on a case-by-case basis for “urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest.”

The policy was made retroactive to March 9, meaning imagery from the early weeks of the U.S.-Iran war that began Feb. 28 is also subject to the new restrictions.

The move instantly reshaped how journalists, open-source researchers and human rights groups can monitor the fighting, at a time when Iranian authorities have already imposed sweeping internet disruptions that limit videos and eyewitness accounts from the ground.

A major source of wartime imagery goes dark

Over the past decade, Planet Labs has become one of the most important providers of commercial satellite images to governments, news organizations and nonprofits. Its constellation of hundreds of small satellites, along with a smaller fleet of higher-resolution craft, produces daily pictures of nearly every spot on Earth.

Those images have been used to verify missile strikes in Ukraine, map the destruction of neighborhoods in Gaza and track troop movements in Syria. Editors at major news outlets rely on Planet’s data when they have no reporters on the ground. Human rights investigators use before-and-after images to corroborate accounts of attacks on homes, hospitals and schools.

In its April 4 notice, as reported by multiple news agencies, Planet said the new restrictions would cover “the whole of Iran and nearby allied bases, in addition to the Gulf States and existing conflict zones.” That region includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and parts of Iraq and Syria where U.S. and allied forces operate.

The company did not publish the email publicly, but the text has been quoted in coverage by Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera and other outlets. Planet described the situation as “extraordinary circumstances” and said it was trying to balance the needs of “all stakeholders” while reducing the risk that its imagery could be used to harm “allied and NATO-partner personnel and civilians.”

The firm did not respond to a request for further comment. The U.S. Department of Defense declined earlier in March to say whether it had requested any changes in companies’ imaging policies over the Middle East. As of early April, no U.S. agency had publicly confirmed issuing a formal order.

From delay to blackout

The April blackout capped a month of progressively tighter controls.

On March 6, about a week after U.S. and Israeli forces launched large-scale strikes on Iranian targets, Planet informed some customers that new imagery from the Arab Gulf states, Iraq, Kuwait and “adjacent conflict zones” would be subject to a 96-hour delay. The rationale, the company said at the time, was to prevent “adversarial entities” from using fresh data for targeting or battle damage assessment.

By March 11 and 12, Planet had expanded that restricted area to “all of Iran and nearby allied bases, in addition to the Gulf States and existing conflict zones,” and lengthened the delay to two weeks for many products. In comments to The Washington Post then, a company spokesperson emphasized that those changes were not ordered by any government but were instituted by the firm after consulting “experts inside and outside government.”

The April 4 email represented a clear shift. For the first time in this conflict, Planet explicitly said it was acting “following a request” from the administration of President Donald Trump that commercial satellite imagery providers indefinitely withhold imagery of the war zone.

Public reporting has focused on “high-resolution” imagery, which typically allows individual vehicles, buildings and craters to be distinguished clearly. Planet has historically placed its very high-resolution products under stricter review in conflict zones, while continuing to provide lower-resolution daily imagery. The company has not specified exactly which product lines or resolution thresholds are now subject to indefinite withholding.

Legal authority — and gray areas

Under U.S. law, satellite imaging firms like Planet must operate under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, through an office known as Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs. The legal framework, rooted in the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 and detailed in regulations at 15 C.F.R. Part 960, requires operators to protect national security and U.S. foreign policy interests.

Those rules give the Commerce secretary, in consultation with the secretaries of Defense and State, authority to issue what are called “limited operations directives.” Such directives — sometimes referred to as shutter control — can order a U.S. operator to limit or temporarily halt imaging or distribution over specific areas and time periods.

In 2020, however, the Commerce Department revised its regulations to say it would generally avoid shutter control when comparable imagery is available from foreign sources, in order not to disadvantage U.S. companies in a global marketplace.

It is not clear whether the Iran-war restrictions stem from any formal directive. Planet has referred only to a government “request” and has not said its license conditions were modified. The Commerce Department and NOAA, which houses the licensing office, have not commented publicly.

Legal experts say that distinction matters on paper, but that in practice the line between a request and an order can blur.

“The government doesn’t have to issue a formal shutter-control directive for a company to feel intense pressure to comply,” said one analyst who studies commercial remote sensing policy. “Licensing is essential to their business, and the U.S. government is often their biggest customer.”

Precedents and departures

The United States has used authority over commercial satellite imagery before.

For more than two decades, the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment restricted U.S. firms from selling images of Israel and the Palestinian territories at higher resolution than what was available abroad. That limit was eased in 2020 after foreign providers began offering sharper data.

In recent conflicts, U.S. companies have sometimes voluntarily adopted measures to mitigate perceived risks. During the 2023 war between Israel and Hamas, Planet said it imposed “additional review for SkySat imagery over the conflict region” but continued to supply data to news organizations and rights groups.

The current restrictions over Iran are broader in geography and more open-ended in time than those earlier examples. They also come as non-U.S. imagery providers, particularly in China, are offering detailed images of the Iran war, including U.S. military deployments and damage to bases, with no apparent constraints from Washington.

That asymmetry has led some industry analysts to warn that sweeping, unilateral limits could undercut U.S. firms without significantly degrading adversaries’ access to overhead information.

Information void for journalists and investigators

For reporters and open-source investigators, the blackout is already changing how they work.

Media organizations that have long relied on Planet to verify strike locations and assess damage now face longer delays, more gaps and a higher bar for access. Instead of pulling a new image from an online archive within hours or days, they must request material and wait for the company to rule on whether their use meets the “public interest” test.

Researchers who specialize in open-source intelligence say this will slow or halt investigations into key incidents, including alleged strikes on civilian infrastructure in Iranian cities and attacks on U.S.-linked facilities in the Gulf.

Human rights groups, which had already warned that Iran’s near-total internet shutdown “severely hampers the work of journalists and human rights monitors,” now have fewer tools to corroborate what limited testimony and footage they receive from inside the country.

“The combination of a domestic communications blackout and restricted satellite imagery makes it extremely difficult to document possible laws-of-war violations by all parties,” one rights advocate said.

A precedent for future wars

U.S. officials and Planet have framed the new restrictions as a matter of security and safety, not secrecy, and stress that imagery can still be released when there is a clear public interest. Supporters of tighter controls argue that real-time or near-real-time high-resolution images can help Iranian forces and allied militias refine their targeting of U.S. and partner troops, ships and bases.

Critics, including some in the open-source and human rights communities, say an indefinite, retroactive blackout over such a wide area risks blinding the very actors who rely on independent evidence to hold governments accountable.

What is clear is that one of the clearest windows onto modern warfare now hinges on decisions made in quiet exchanges between governments and a handful of private firms. In the Iran conflict, those decisions have turned daily views from orbit into a managed commodity, rationed out under criteria that remain largely opaque to the public.