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Thank you. The compliment is returned, and I appreciate reading your posts even when I disagree.
To the topic-
The point on Iran is that even when enforcement is done by a regime willing to brutalize the public, it's not feasible to keep satellite dishes out. Brazil is much able to do that, and that's before you hit the point that the more authorized satellite dish variants you have on the market, the easier it is to just hide your dish within the mess (or just out of easily inspectable sight). If someone is using the same technology base, this would be like trying to regulate cars by demanding distinctive tailpipes.
It takes a huge, system-defining prioritization to do a Chinese-style surveilance state to do such a thing... and as you note, even that is not enough to keep information out.
Which then comes back to 'what are you spending so much money and political costs for, exactly?'
Which applies to both the Starlink-suppression, and the Starlink-'competitor'.
The value of starlink as a commercial service is the internet access without having to build/have infrastructure on that part of the planet. If you are on that part of the planet, it is in many respects more profitable / sensible to just... build the infrastructure on that part of the planet. Which is what China already does through companies like Huawei and 5G networks, which produce separate geopolitical benefits that come from having your fingers on all the data. Brazil paying China to build a Sino-link to provide Brazilian internet is directly competing with money to just, well, paying China less per network capacity to build better Brazilian internet that can be physically overseen by Brazil. Corruption on such a scale isn't impossible, but it is stupid.
(Especially since the only cost-competitive space agency able to launch the satellites in the foreseeable future is... SpaceX.)
It also doesn't address the issue of ideological interest of the Americans to back Starlink on this. Starlink won't go out of business if there's business competition, because part of Starlink's value to the American government is expanding the information sphere, and it (or things like it) can practically be guaranteed funding regardless of competiting power states. You may even see the US subsidize Starlink (or equivalent) satellite-internet at a global scale in the future, just to undercut the businness of others. Providing American-media-sphere access across the globe is an interest in and of itself, no matter how many strategic competitors set up their own, and especially if they do.
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