With Iran and world powers close to a nuclear deal, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday took to Twitter, launching a new account in Farsi in an attempt to reach out to the Iranian public.
In his first tweet, Netanyahu, a fierce critic of the emerging deal, immediately criticized the ongoing negotiations, according to The Associated Press (AP).
Netanyahu's office said that the Farsi account will publish content similar to Netanyahu's English and Hebrew accounts in an attempt to engage directly with the Iranian people.
The Israeli leader has a popular following on Twitter and often tweets videos and photos with messages critical of the Iranian government and nuclear negotiations, noted AP.
Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media sites and apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram are technically banned or censored in Iran. Nonetheless, many Iranians use Twitter through proxy servers, and Iranian leaders often tweet official statements.
The censorship continues despite claims from the country’s current president, Hassan Rouhani, that he intends to revise Iran’s censorship policy.
In a speech he delivered a month before being sworn in, Rouhani said that a strong government does not “limit the lives of the people.”
Two weeks after his victory in the elections, Rouhani told a popular Iranian youth magazine that he believed social networking sites such as Facebook were a welcome phenomenon.