Dubai,
\nIranian President Hassan Rouhani has criticised the ban imposed on popular messaging app Telegram by the conservative-run judiciary, saying the move was \u201cthe opposite of democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Iran blocked Telegram widely used by Iranians, the state media, politicians and companies \u2014 earlier this week to protect national security, state television said, weeks after a similar move by Russia.<\/p>\n
Iran had been considering the ban since January when protests over economic grievances erupted in more than 80 cities and later turned into demonstrations against the clerical and security elite.<\/p>\n
Some officials said protesters used Telegram to organise rallies, which were ultimately contained by the Revolutionary Guards and their affiliated volunteer Basij militia. The app was temporarily blocked in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cFailure to follow legal procedures and the use of force and judicial means is … the opposite of democracy,\u201d Rouhani, a pragmatic cleric who has advocated expanding social freedoms, said in an Instagram post late on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe filtering and blocking of Telegram was not carried out by the government which does not approve of it,\u201d said Rouhani, who has opposed restricting access to social media.<\/p>\n
Rouhani\u2019s powers are dwarfed by those of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who is close to conservatives and hardliners.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Shi\u2019ite Muslim clerical rulers are wary of any revival of anti-government unrest should President Donald Trump refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief on Iran on May 12, a deadline he set for European signatories of Iran\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers to \u201cfix flaws\u201d in the accord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dubai, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has criticised the ban imposed on popular messaging app Telegram by the conservative-run judiciary, saying the move was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30199,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30197\/revisions\/30199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}