Tehran, April 1 (RHC)-- With no prior notice, Twitter blocked the accounts used by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei before reinstating only two of the channels of communication.
The American company simultaneously blocked the accounts at 03:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday (11:00 p.m. GMT on Monday). The Persian- and English-language accounts were reinstated minutes afterwards, with Twitter claiming it had acted against them by mistake.
The pool of followers had strangely suffered in the process. The English-language account was now being followed by around 490,000 entities, down from the previous 732,000.
Twitter, meanwhile, refused to relieve its obstruction of the Spanish-, Arabic-, and Urdu-language accounts as well as one used for posting videos. The accounts would repeatedly post content promoting integrity among the world’s Muslims in the face of divisive measures by the world’s arrogant powers, including the United States, and entities such as Israel, which enjoy Washington’s unreserved support.
The channels would also relay caution about unjust actions against the Muslim faithful at the hands of domestic or foreign oppressive forces, including those backed by the United States.
A group of U.S. senators have called on Twitter to suspend the accounts of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. This is not the first time when American cyber giants, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, target Iranian accounts.
In early January, Instagram, US social networking giant Facebook’s sister platform, began acting against many Iranians, who were using its service to communicate their condemnation of Washington’s earlier assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani. Instagram was seen either deleting the accounts belonging to the bereaving Iranians or eliminating relevant content posted by them.
Last April, Instagram blocked the pages belonging to many commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), whose Quds Force used to be headed by General Soleimani before his assassination.
Instagram blocks the pages of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and many of its commanders over a week after the U.S. blacklisted the military force. Later this January, Iran’s Fars news agency said access to its .com domain had been blocked after the US Treasury Department blacklisted the media group.
Last December, Google blocked access to Iranian media networks, Press TV and Hispan TV’s official YouTube accounts without any prior notification.
