DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Twitter said on Friday it had permanently banned what it called a “fake” account that would be connected to the office of the supreme leader of Iran, shortly after a post that appeared to threaten the former President Donald Trump.
In the image posted on Thursday night by the report linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump is shown playing golf in the shadow of a giant drone, with the caption “Vengeance is certain” written in Farsi.
In response to a request for comment from the Associated Press, a Twitter spokesman said the tweet violated the company’s “abusive behavior policy” and that the account violated its “manipulation and spam policy”.
In a subsequent statement, he said Twitter determined the account to be “fake”, without explaining how it came to the conclusion.
The suspended account, @khamenei_site, linked to Khamenei’s own website and frequently posted excerpts from his speeches and other official content.
Other accounts allegedly linked to Khamenei’s office that did not tweet the photo of the golf drone, including his main English account, remained active. The photo also appeared prominently on the website of the supreme leader.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter cut Trump off their platforms for allegedly inciting the attack on the United States Capitol, an unprecedented step that highlighted the immense power of technology giants in regulating speech on their platforms. Activists soon urged companies to apply their policies equally to political figures around the world, in order to combat hate speech and content that encourages violence.
The captioned warning referred to Khamenei’s comments last month, ahead of the first anniversary of the U.S. drone attack that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. In his speech, Khamenei did not call Trump by name, but reiterated the vow of vengeance against those who ordered and carried out the attack on Soleimani.
“Revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” said Khamenei.
Iran blocks social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and censors others. While top officials have unrestricted access to social media, young Iranians and tech-savvy citizens use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass controls.
Shortly after Trump’s Twitter ban sparked calls to targeted tweets from other political leaders, the company withdrew a post from a different account linked to Khamenei who espoused a COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state issues in Iran, said that viral vaccines imported from the United States or Britain were “completely untrustworthy”.