US Senator Ted Cruz on Friday urged the US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Twitter, which is embroiled in a feud with the White House, is breaching US law by letting top Iranian officials use the social media platform.
Cruz wrote a letter asking the departments to open an investigation into Twitter “for possible criminal violations” of US sanctions against Iran.
Twitter might have broken the law by letting Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif tweet, despite their being blacklisted under Executive Order 13876, which bars providing goods or services to those targeted, Cruz said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Twitter declined comment on Cruz’s letter.
The departments and the Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Cruz said that he raised the issue with Twitter in February, before the latest dust up between the company and US President Donald Trump.
Twitter this week prompted readers to check the facts in Trump tweets about mail-in ballots and it hid a Trump tweet about Minnesota behind a banner saying that it breached its rules on glorifying violence.
Cruz said that Twitter is not entitled to an exception under a treasury department general license allowing services to those blacklisted “solely” under another executive order, 13599, which targets the Iranian government.
Washington-based sanctions lawyer Doug Jacobson said that Twitter “could take the legal position that the services they provide are exempt from the scope of sanctions on Iran by the long-standing Berman Amendment and the Free Trade in Ideas Act.”
Jacobson referred to a law sponsored by former US representative Howard Berman to prevent regulation of the import or export of “informational materials.”
However, he said that the treasury department’s General License D-1 “imposes certain limits on the provision of social media services in Iran.”
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