Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei calls for more control over the Internet

2024-08-27 14:42:31

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called on the new government to exercise more control over the internet, already under draconian restrictions.

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“What is important is that the law is applied in the virtual space, (…) I have said once that the virtual space is left to its own devices,” Khamenei said before the members of government, such as images from state television.

In Iran, access to the internet, especially to social networks, is largely filtered or restricted by the authorities: without anti-virus software such as VPN, many web pages hosted outside the country are inaccessible.

“If you don’t have a law, create one,” said Ayatollah Khamenei.

After the protests sparked in 2022 by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested for violating the strict dress code, Iran has blocked Instagram and WhatsApp, the most used applications to block YouTube platforms , Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and Tiktok in recent years.

And Iran warns that WhatsApp and Instagram will only be allowed to operate if they have a legal representative in the country.

But Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it has no plans to set up an office in Iran.

Ayatollah Khamenei was speaking to the ministers of the new government, formed by recently elected reformist President Massoud Pezeshkian, who pleaded during his election campaign for an Iran more socially tolerant and open to the West.