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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Twitter said on Friday it had permanently banned what it called a “fake” account believed to be linked to the office of Iran’s supreme leader, shortly after a post that appeared threaten former President Donald Trump.
In the image released Thursday night by the account linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump is seen playing golf in the shadow of a giant drone, with the caption “Revenge is certain” written in Farsi.
In response to a request for comment from The Associated Press, a Twitter spokesperson said the tweet violated the company’s “policy of abusive behavior” and that the account violated its “policy of manipulation and abuse. spam ”.
In a subsequent statement, he said Twitter determined the account to be “fake”, without specifying how he came to the conclusion.
The suspended account, @khamenei_site, linked Khamenei’s own website and frequently posted clips of his speeches and other official content.
Other accounts believed to be linked to Khamenei’s office that did not tweet the photo of the golf drone, including his main English account, remained active. The photo had also featured prominently on the Supreme Leader’s website.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter cut Trump off their platforms for allegedly instigating an assault on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented step that underscored the immense power of tech giants in regulation speech on their platforms. Activists were quick to urge companies to apply their policies equally to politicians around the world in order to tackle hate speech and content that encourages violence.
The warning in the caption referred to Khamenei’s remarks last month ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. In his speech, Khamenei did not call Trump by name, but reiterated a vow of revenge against those who ordered and carried out the Soleimani attack.
“Revenge will certainly come at the right time,” Khamenei said.
Iran blocks social media websites like Facebook and Twitter and censors others. While senior officials have unfettered access to social media, Iranian youth and tech-savvy citizens are using proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass checks.
Shortly after Trump’s ban on Twitter sparked calls to target tweets from other political leaders, the company deleted a post from another Khamenei-linked account pushing for a COVID vaccine conspiracy theory -19.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, had claimed that virus vaccines imported from the United States or Britain were “totally untrustworthy.”
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