TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to shut down his Twitter account for using the social media platform – which the Islamic regime has banned for its own citizens – to claim that all Iranians support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In a video message, Netanyahu slammed Zarif for his Saturday tweet reading: “Today, Iranians –boys, girls, men, women — are ALL IRGC; standing firm with those who defend us & the region against aggression & terror.” On Friday, President Donald Trump said he would decertify the Iranian nuclear deal and employ “tough sanctions” on the IRGC, calling it a “terror force.”
“I hope you’re sitting down, because this one’s a whopper,” Netanyahu said in his video before citing Zarif’s tweet.
“I’d love to know what the Iranian people think of that tweet,” Netanyahu said. “Sadly, the regime bans them from using Twitter. Ironic, don’t you think?”
“Apparently I have a higher opinion of the Iranian people than their leaders. See, I’m sure that ordinary Iranians aren’t proud when the Revolutionary Guard murders innocent men and women around the globe. I’m sure that ordinary Iranian mothers and fathers wouldn’t have blown up a Jewish community center in Argentina filled with little children. Because that’s what the the Revolutionary Guard did,” he said in reference to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that claimed the lives of 85 people.
“I am sure that ordinary Iranians want to live in peace and don’t want their government to shoot students in the streets, hang gays from cranes, torture journalists in prison,” Netanyahu said.
“One day the Iranian people will be free. Free to tweet, free to express how they felt when their dictators compared them to the Iranian version of ISIS. So I have a simple message for Iran’s foreign minister: Delete. Your. Account.”
Zarif’s tweet, which was retweeted almost 1,000 times, garnered thousands of responses, many of them from Iranians who reject the foreign minister’s claim.
Editor’s note: This article was edited to remove a tweet from alleged Iranian activist Heshmat Alavi after a report raised serious questions about the authenticity of the purported activist.
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