Facebook closes Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei’s page

The Arabic Facebook page of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was deleted on Friday, according to Persian-language news agency Tasnim.

The page had some 100,000 followers and had been earlier restricted by the American social media company, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency.

This is not the first time that pages related to the Islamic Revolution Leader are being restricted in social media as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have repeatedly removed posts from ‘Khamenei.ir’ accounts or imposed other limitations for not adhering to the rules of use.

The Iranian government cut off the internet across the country on November 16 before a crackdown on nationwide protests against a steep increase in fuel prices announced a day earlier.

Following that, a US State Department official had called for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to suspend the accounts of Iran’s leaders.

Brian Hook, US special envoy for Iran, had accused the Iranian leaders of hypocrisy by continuing to use social media while imposing an internet blackout across the country.

“We are calling on social media companies like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter to shut down the accounts of supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, the Foreign Minister [Javad] Zarif and President [Hassan] Rouhani until they restore the internet to their own people,” Hook told Bloomberg.