Twitter Suspends Fake Account Linked To Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei For Warning Donald Trump

Dubai:

Twitter said on Friday it had suspended what it said was a fake account that carried a link to the website of Iran’s Supreme Leader on Friday, hours after it carried the image of a golfer resembling former U.S. President Donald Trump apparently being targeted by a drone.

The post, on a Persian-language account carrying a link to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website, had carried the text of remarks by him in December in which he said “Revenge is certain” – referring to the killing of a top Iranian general in a U.S. drone attack.

A Twitter spokeswoman said the @khamenei_site account was suspended for violating the company’s platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. Asked if the @khamenei_site account was fake, she said it was.

The golfer image tweet was retweeted by Khamenei’s main Persian-language account @Khamenei-fa, although it appeared to have been deleted later. The text and graphic of the tweet was also carried by Khamenei’s official website (farsi.khamenei.ir) and widely quoted by Iranian media.

Khamenei’s @Khamenei_fa account and his main Twitter account in English, which did not carry the golfer image tweet, were still operational.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)