DUBAI: As protests over Iran’s faltering economy rapidly spread across the country, a channel on a mobile messaging app run by an exiled journalist helped fan the passions of some of those who took to the street.
The Telegram app closed a channel run by Roohallah Zam after Iranian authorities complained that it was inciting violence, just hours before the government shut down the app entirely on Sunday. Zam, who denies the allegations, meanwhile launched new channels to spread messages about upcoming protests and share videos from demonstrations.
What happens next could influence the future course of the largest protests Iran has seen since 2009.
It’s hard to overstate the power of Telegram in Iran. Of its 80 million people, an estimated 40 million use the free app created by Russian national Pavel Durov. Its clients share videos and photos, subscribing to groups where everyone from politicians to poets broadcast to fellow users.
While authorities ban social media websites like Facebook and Twitter and censor others, Telegram users can say nearly anything. In the last presidential election, the app played a big role in motivating turnout and spreading political screeds.
Telegram touts itself as being highly encrypted and allows users to set their messages to “self-destruct” after a certain period, making it a favorite among activists and others concerned about their privacy. That too has made it a worry of Iranian authorities.
Zam has used the app to share news and information published by his AmadNews website. Posts included times and locations for protests, as well as videos of demonstrators shouting inflammatory chants, including those targeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
Officials have meanwhile targeted Telegram in recent remarks, with prosecutors going as far as filing criminal charges against Durov.
On Saturday, Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Mohammed Javad Azari Jahromi wrote to Durov on Twitter, complaining AmadNews was “encouraging hateful conduct, use (of) Molotov cocktails, armed uprising and social unrest.”
Durov responded by saying Telegram suspended the account.
“A Telegram channel (Amadnews) started to instruct their subscribers to use Molotov cocktails against police and got suspended due to our ‘no calls for violence’ rule. Be careful — there are lines one shouldn’t cross.” Durov tweeted.
Zam, who has said he fled Iran after being falsely accused of working with foreign intelligence services, denied inciting violence on Telegram.
Telegram’s decision drew criticism from free Internet advocates and Iranians. Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed US government surveillance programs in 2013, said Telegram should instead be working on how to make the service accessible after a potential government ban.
“Telegram will face increasing pressure over time to collaborate with the Iranian government’s demands for this or that,” Snowden wrote on Twitter.
He added: “You can’t keep an independent, destabilizing service from being blocked in authoritarian regimes, you can only delay it.”
Those words proved prophetic Sunday, as Durov himself wrote on Twitter that Iran blocked the app “for the majority of Iranians after our public refusal to shut down ... peacefully protesting channels.” Iranian state television later quoted an anonymous official as saying the app would be temporarily limited as a safety measure.
It also marks a setback for Zam, the son of cleric Mohammad Ali Zam, who once served in a government policy position in the early 1980s. The cleric wrote a letter published by Iranian media in July in which he said he wouldn’t support his son over AmadNews’ reporting and messages on its Telegram channel.
“I found that you crossed the red line,” the cleric wrote, referring to comments the channel circulated about Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Our red line is the supreme leader, but you passed the red line.”
Zam did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday from The Associated Press, though he published a video late on Saturday on the channel being blocked.
“Unfortunately the Amadnews was blocked,” Zam said in a message to his followers. A new channel “will continue its work as hard as before and with the help of God, we will become millions again.”
At least 1.7 million people have viewed the first message on the new channel, according to Telegram. It called for protests on Sunday at sites across Iran before the government ordered the app shut down.
Protests in Iran fanned by exiled journalist, messaging app
Protests in Iran fanned by exiled journalist, messaging app
Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
- The brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and police were investigating the motive
- While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks“
OSLO: Norwegian police said Wednesday three brothers had been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” over a weekend explosion at the US embassy in Oslo, which caused minor damage but no injuries.
Police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive.
“We are still working from several hypotheses. One of them is whether this is an order from a government entity,” Hatlo said.
“This is quite natural given the target — the US embassy — and the security situation the world is in today,” he said.
Hatlo said the investigation would seek to clarify exactly what roles the brothers, who were in their 20s, had played.
“We believe that one of them is the person who placed the bomb outside the embassy and that the other two were complicit in the act,” Hatlo told reporters.
Oystein Storrvik, a lawyer for one of the suspects, told broadcaster TV 2 that his client had admitted “to being involved in the case.”
“He admits that he placed the bomb there,” Storrvik told the broadcaster.
Storrvik added that his client had been questioned by police.
“He has explained what happened, and I have no further comments at this time,” he said.
- ‘Proxy actors’ -
While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks.”
In its annual threat assessment, Norwegian security service PST said last month that Iran, which it considers one of the main threats to the country, could rely on “proxy actors,” including “criminal networks,” to commit acts.
On Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador in Oslo denied any involvement by his country in the embassy explosion.
“It is unacceptable that we are being singled out,” Alireza Jahangiri told Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.
According to police, the perpetrators of the bombing, described as “powerful,” may also have acted out of their own motives.
US embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East due to American strikes on Iran. Several have faced attacks as Tehran responds by targeting industrial and diplomatic facilities.
The blast took place at around 1:00 am (0000 GMT) on Sunday at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section.
On Monday, two images were released from surveillance camera footage showing a suspect dressed in dark clothing with a hood over his head and wearing a backpack.
Roughly at the time the incident occurred, a video had been uploaded to the Google Maps page for the US embassy.
The video, which has since been taken down, appeared to show Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes in Iran.
According to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, the person who uploaded the video wrote in Persian: “God is great. We are victorious.”
Police have also opened an investigation into this.
