DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Twitter said Friday it had permanently banned a so-called ‘fake’ account believed to be linked to the office of Iran’s supreme leader, shortly after a message sent by former President Donald Trump seemed to be threatening.
In the image posted late Thursday by the account linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump is shown playing golf in the shadow of a gigantic drone, with the caption “Revenge Is Certain” written in Farsi.
Responding to a request for comment from The Associated Press, a Twitter spokesperson said the tweet violated the company’s “abuse policy” and that the account violated its “manipulation and spam policy.”
In a later statement, he said Twitter determined the account was ‘fake’, without explaining how it came to the conclusion.
The suspended account, @khamenei_site, linked Khamenei’s own website and regularly posted excerpts from his speeches and other official content.
Other accounts believed to be related to Khamenei’s office not tweeting the wave drone photo, including his main English-language account, remained active. The photo was also featured prominently on the supreme leader’s website.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter shut Trump off their platforms for reportedly instigating the attack on the US Capitol, an unprecedented move that underscored the immense power of tech giants in regulating speech on their platforms. Activists were quick to urge companies to apply their policies equally to political figures around the world to combat hate speech and content that encourages violence.
The warning in the caption referred to Khamenei’s comments last month ahead of the first 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 attack on Soleimani.
“Revenge will certainly come at the right time,” Khamenei had stated.
Iran blocks social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter and censors others. While top officials have unfettered access to social media, Iranian youth and tech-savvy citizens are using proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.
Shortly after Trump’s ban on Twitter sparked calls to target tweets from other political leaders, the company removed a message from another Khamenei-linked account pushing a COVID-19 vaccine plot theory.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state affairs in Iran, had claimed virus vaccines imported from the US or Great Britain were “completely unreliable”.