Conflict areas

Military satellites over Iran

On 21 October 2026, working military satellites of 22 countries were predicted to pass over the places in Iran where UCDP recorded fighting this year: 908 passes by 470 satellites. China's made the most: 556 passes by 244 satellites. A country's satellites over itself are not counted.

UCDP recorded 3,647 deaths (best estimate) in 120 events of state-based armed conflict in Iran between 8 January 2026 and 31 August 2026, and 2 clusters of one country's military satellites over the fighting are predicted in the next day.

Passes by country, 21 October 2026

predicted

How often each country's working military satellites pass over the fighting in Iran in the UTC day, for how many minutes in all, and by how many satellites. Arrows: the last 7 days against the 7 before, shown from 10% when new, moved or stopped satellites are behind it, or from 35% otherwise.

Clusters over Iran

next 24 h

When 4 or more of one country's working military satellites, from different launches, are over the fighting in Iran at the same time. Passes are fixed by orbits days ahead, so a cluster is usually a coincidence; satellites that changed orbit in the past week are marked. Worked out 21 Oct, 01:18 UTC from 827 working military satellites.

The fighting, from UCDP

1 January 2026 to 10 September 2026

The state-based armed conflicts UCDP recorded deaths in Iran this year, with when each began from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (to 2025). Conflicts that began later aren't in that list yet.

ConflictDeathsSince
Iran - Israel, United States of America3,537Not in the conflict list yet
Iran: Government
Internal		7113 August 1972
this round since 15 December 2023
Iran: Kurdistan
Internal		2031 May 1946
Iran: Islamic State
Internal		115 August 2016

Other conflict areas

by passes

Passes and clusters: predicted by overhead24 for each minute of the day from Space-Track.org orbital elements, counting a pass when the point beneath a satellite is in or next to a 0.5° cell where UCDP recorded a death this year. Military satellites and their countries: GCAT by Jonathan McDowell (CC BY 4.0). Fighting: the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset (CC BY 4.0). Hegre, Håvard, Mihai Croicu, Kristine Eck and Stina Högbladh (2020), "Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset", Research & Politics. UCDP is part of and funded by DEMSCORE, national research infrastructure grant 2021-00162 from the Swedish Research Council. Conflict start dates: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset 26.1. Davies, Shawn, Therése Pettersson and Magnus Öberg (2026), "Organized violence 1989–2025, and violent political protests", Journal of Peace Research, doi:10.1093/jopres/xjag046; Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg and Håvard Strand (2002), "Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset", Journal of Peace Research 39(5). See military satellites by country and how overhead24 works.