Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called on the new government to exercise more control over the internet, which is already subject to strict restrictions.
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“What is important is the application of the rule of law in cyberspace, (…) I have sometimes said that cyberspace is left to its own devices,” Khamenei told cabinet members, according to images from state television.
In Iran, access to the Internet, especially to social networks, is filtered or severely restricted by the authorities: without anti-censorship software of the VPN type, most web pages hosted outside the country cannot be accessed.
“If you don’t have a law, create one,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
Following protests in 2022 over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested for violating strict dress codes, Iran blocked Instagram and WhatsApp, the most widely used apps since YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and TikTok were blocked in 2022. In recent years.
Iran has warned that WhatsApp and Instagram will not be allowed to operate unless they have a legal representative in the country.
But Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it has no plans to set up an office in Iran.
Ayatollah Khamenei was speaking to ministers in the new government, formed by recently elected reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who campaigned to make Iran more socially tolerant and more open to the West.
