A Twitter account belonging to Iran’s ideal leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested the Iranian government avoid imports of “luxury American smartphones” in a tweet sent from an Apple iPhone.
The anti-American call sent on Sunday via Khamenei’s Russian Twitter account. Ayatollah has several Twitter accounts in several languages, adding English, Arabic, French and Spanish.
The Russian account opened in January 2020 and has more than 7,000 subscribers. Its success is much lower than that of the English account, which has more than 809,000 subscribers.
“Domestic production is the key to employment, well-being, reducing inflation and expanding the strength of the national currency,” Khamenei tweeted. “Unnecessary imports, such as luxury goods, are a barrier to production. Last year, part $1 billion was spent charging some brand of American luxury cell phones. The government will have to avoid this.”
Similar tweets were sent from several of Khamenei’s accounts, but the Russian account used an iPhone to do so. The English tweet was sent via the Twitter Internet app. Other TweetDeck tweets have already been sent for Android phones.
Khamenei made the same appeal against imports to cabinet ministers at a video convention assembly on Sunday “Government Week.” Khamenei called for economic reforms and condemned luxury imports into the assembly, according to statements published on its non-public website.
“Excessive imports are harmful and important,” he told ministers. “Sometimes this import is a luxury product, which means it’s not necessary. I heard about $1 billion spent on charging a type of American luxury mobile phone in [2019]. Of course, it is the personal sector that does it.” , however, the government has to avoid it.”
Khamenei and key regime figures such as President Hassan Rohani and Javad Foreign Minister Zarif use Twitter to succeed in a foreign audience, even though the platform and other popular social media sites like Instagram are banned in Iran.
Twitter has already punished Khamanei for violating its rules, and his account was temporarily suspended in 2019 for passing a devout ruling through his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who sentenced Britain’s Salman Rushdie to death for blasphemy.
President Donald Trump’s management has complained that Twitter continues to allow Khamenei to post on the site. When a Tweet from Trump reported via Twitter of “glorification of violence,” the White House tweeted a message from Khamenei praising “jihad” in “the struggle to liberate Palestine.” Khamenei said that fighters “even if they die” will get rewards from God.
The White House has accused Twitter of double standards and has written: “Twitter has decided that it will allow foreign terrorists, dictators and propagandists to abuse its platform.”
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