Facebook — banned in Iran because of its use by activists to rally government opponents in 2009 — has an unlikely new member: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Launched a few days ago, the Facebook page “Khamenei.ir” displays photographs of the 73-year-old cleric alongside speeches and pronouncements by the man who wields ultimate power in the Islamic Republic.
While there are several other Facebook pages already devoted to Khamenei, the new one — whose number of “likes” quadrupled on Monday to over 1,000 — appeared to be officially authorized, rather than merely the work of admirers.
The page has been publicized by a Twitter account of the same name that Iran experts believe is run by Khamenei’s office.
Both US-based social media sites are blocked in Iran by a wide-reaching government censor, but they are still commonly used by millions of Iranians who use special software to get around the ban.
In 2009, social media were a vital tool for those Iranians who believed the re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged. Facebook was used to help organize street protests of a scale not seen since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The protests — which the government said were fueled by Iran’s foreign enemies — were eventually stamped out by the security forces and their political figureheads remain under house arrest.
Khamenei’s Facebook page has so far shared a picture of a young Khamenei alongside the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the early 1960s.
It shares a similar tone, style and content with accounts devoted to disseminating Khamenei’s message on Twitter, Instagram and the Web site www.khamenei.ir, a sophisticated official Web site published in 13 languages.
Experts said the social media accounts showed that Iran, despite restricting access to such sites inside the country, was keen to use them to spread its world view to a global audience.
“Social media gives the regime leadership another medium of communication, one that can share their message with a younger and far more international demographic,” said Afshon Ostovar, a Middle East analyst at CNA, a US-based research organization.
Iran is locked in a decade-long dispute with the West over its nuclear program, which the US and its allies suspect is aimed at developing a bomb, something Iran has repeatedly denied. Iran, the West and regional states are also often opposed on issues such as the violence raging in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Iranian authorities have said they are trying to build a national intranet, something skeptics say is a way to further control Iranians’ access to the global Web. Tehran tried to block Google Inc’s e-mail service this year, but soon reopened access.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion