Elon Musk’s X on Monday blocked an account tied to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after it posted a message in Hebrew.
The account was suspended after Israel attacked Iran this past weekend in response to Iran’s barrage of 200 rockets targeting the Jewish state earlier this month.
“In the name of God, the most merciful,” the X post said in Hebrew on Sunday. The phrase is a standard Islamic greeting.
“X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules,” the social media platform wrote. The company did not clarify which rule the post violated. X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Sunday, Khamenei said during a speech that Israel’s strikes “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”
Another X account linked to Khamenei made a post in English on Sunday about Israel’s attacks.
“Zionists are making a miscalculation with respect to Iran. They don’t know Iran,” the post read. “They still haven’t been able to correctly understand the power, initiative, and determination of the Iranian people.”
The 85-year-old supreme leader has posted messages in multiple languages from several accounts on X over the years.
In 2018, the social media platform, then known as Twitter, faced backlash after it left one of the leader’s accounts up after it posted a threatening message.
“Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen,” the tweet said.
World leaders were quick to denounce the aggressive post. German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the tweet and Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland called it an “incitement to violence.”
But Twitter left the post up, citing its controversial policy on world leaders.
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” the policy said.
In 2022, Twitter banned an account linked to the supreme leader after it promoted a video of a drone strike killing Trump. Other accounts associated with Khamenei were left online.
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta said it suspended Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Khamenei after “repeated violations” of its “dangerous organizations and individuals policy.”
Musk – the world’s richest person with a net worth of $268.6 billion, according to Forbes – bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. He subsequently rebranded the social media giant X, which he promoted as a free speech platform.
Prior to the acquisition, Musk had criticized Twitter for blocking links to The Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop and permanently banning then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. Musk restored Trump’s account.
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