DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Twitter said on Friday it was banning a fake “account allegedly linked to the office of Iran’s supreme leader, shortly after a post that apparently threatened former President Donald Trump.
In the photo posted late Thursday by the account linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump is shown playing golf in the shadow of a giant drone, with the caption “Revenge is sure” in Farsi.
In response to a request for comment from The Associated Press, a Twitter spokesperson said that the tweet violated the company’s ‘abusive behavior policy’, and that the account violated its ‘manipulation and spam policy’.
In a later statement, he said that Twitter had determined that the account was ‘fake’, without elaborating on how it came to that conclusion.
The suspended account, @khamenei_site, linked Khamenei’s own website and regularly posted excerpts from his speeches and other official content.
It is believed that other accounts linked to the Khamenei office that did not tweet the golf drone photo, including his main English account, remain active. The photo was also prominent on the Supreme Leader’s website.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter cut off Trump from their platforms for allegedly inciting the assault on the U.S. Capitol, an unprecedented move that underscored the tremendous power of technology giants in regulating speech on their platforms. Activists soon urged the companies to apply their policies equally to political figures worldwide to combat hate speech and content that encourages violence.
The caption warning refers to Khamenei’s remarks last month ahead of the first anniversary of the US drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guards General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. In his speech, Khamenei did not mention Trump by name, but reiterated a vow of revenge against those who ordered and carried out the attack on Soleimani.
“Revenge will definitely take place at the right time,” Khamenei declared.
Iran blocks social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and censors others. Although top officials have unlimited access to social media, Iran’s youth and technology citizens use proxy servers or other solutions to circumvent the controls.
Shortly after Trump’s ban on Twitter calls to direct tweets from other political leaders, the company took down a post from another Khamenei-linked account that pushed a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state affairs in Iran, claimed that virus vaccines imported from the US or Britain were ‘completely unreliable’.