“Facebook is Filthy and an Espionage Tool of the Zionists”

The secretary general of “The Workgroup on Identifying Criminal Content” ( Kargoroohe Tayin Masadighe Mohtavaye Mojremane ) announced that while the government had till now not received an official request for the ban on Facebook to be lifted, it called such a request “inappropriate” and added that Facebook was an espionage site and a tool to overthrown the Islamic republic.

Remarks like these made by the leader of this group Abdol-Samad Khoramabadi have also been made by other right-wing principlists, religious personalities, judiciary officials and even Majlis representatives but his remarks carry greater weight because he sits on the committee that has ultimate decision over the fate of filtering websites in Iran. His remarks are viewed to be a direct response to the comments made by the minister of Islamic guidance who recently said that membership in Facebook did not constitute “criminal content”.

Judicial Action to Advocates of Facebook

These days the not talk in Iranian Facebook sites is about Lionel Messi, the Argentinean soccer icon and Fernanda Lima, the World Cup drawing hostess. Some reports indicate that comments by Iranian internet users on these has reached tens of thousands, indicating that the Filtering of Facebook has actually failed to be the barrier for Iranian presence in the blogosphere. But since a new president took office in Iran in June this year, the issue of whether to continue filtering Facebook or not has emerged as a challenge for state officials.

Fars news agency, closely associated with the rightwing principlists reported that in an interview with Abdol-Samad Khoramabadi, the secretary general of the Criminal Content group, he was asked whether a request to lift the current ban on Facebook had been officially registered to which he responded by saying, “No such request has been made till now and I doubt that such an inappropriate request will be made because of the express remarks by the supreme leader last week regarding the effective role of Facebook in the 2009 sedition (a term Iranian officials use for the public protests to the disputed 2009 presidential election) and also the warnings that have been issued by some senior clerics and regime royalists.”

Like some other state officials, Khoramabadi also said Facebook was “filthy and amoral” and quoted a law that considers encouraging anyone to join such sites as a crime. “Membership in Facebook is helping the spy agencies of the enemy,” he said.

According to him, the cause of a third of divorces in the UK and a fifth in the US was Facebook. He said even the US president did not allow his daughters to be Facebook members.

He presented his solution to this problem to be the participation of Iranian Internet users to join Iranian online social networks which according to him would “create enthusiasm and passion” among Iranians and would prevent the enemy from gaining information about the country. Iran’s minister of telecommunications and technology later thanked him for these remarks.

The Administration and the Opponents of Lifting the Facebook Ban

After senior cleric ayatollah Makarem Shirazi expressed his concerns about the pressure on lifting Facebook, the police and the judiciary joined the bandwagon to criticize any change in the current ban. The chief of police went even further and complained that the membership of some cabinet members in Facebook, while the site was banned for the public, was a gradual “break through the red line”.

Iran’s minister of Islamic guidance Ali Jannati has publicly said that he is on Facebook and that he does not view the site as criminal. A recent meeting by cabinet minister of state Mohammad Reza Sadegh and six members of the supreme council on cyberspace to discuss lifting the ban on Facebook was strongly criticized by some Majlis representatives. Among the protestors was Fatemeh Rahbar, a member of the Article 90 of the Constitution committee of the Majlis who quoted ayatollah Khamenei to say that the online social networks were tools of the enemy to overthrow the regime.

But despite these remarks, foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has one of the most popular Persian language Facebook accounts and feels a commitment to write on it and exchange views with the public. Ishaq Jahangiri, Bijan Zangane, Shahindokht Molaverdi and Masumeh Ebtekar are other cabinet level members of the administration who are active on Facebook and president Rouhani’s Twitter account too is read widely on the Internet. In response to a question by Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, Rouhani said that it was the right of the Iranian people to have access to global information.

Last month, the website of Iran’s ministry of telecommunications and technology announced that the issues of lifting the ban on online social networks in Iran was under discussion and the public would be soon informed of its decision.