Instagram censors Iranian support for assassinated nuclear chief: report

Iranians were reportedly outraged that the social media platform Instagram removed posts expressing support for Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, following his assassination on Friday, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday. News. the accounts of the Iranians who supported the murdered scientist, or had simply removed the content.The Jerusalem Post has sent press inquiries to Instagram’s parent company Facebook for confirmation. This is not the first time that Instagram has removed posts supporting a murdered Iranian official. In January, Facebook announced that it would remove Instagram posts supporting the assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani to comply with U.S. sanctions, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to CNN at that time. moment. for legal action against Instagram, which is one of the few Western social media outlets that is not completely banned in the Islamic Republic, according to CNN. Fakhrizadeh was a senior IRGC official who ran Iran’s nuclear program, and also served as a professor of physics at the Tehran Imam Hussein University. Due to his role in overseeing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, he was known to Israeli and American officials as the Iranian version of Robert Oppenheimer. On Friday, however, Fakhrizadeh was shot dead in Damavand, east of Tehran. Images from the scene showed two vehicles, one damaged by an explosion and the other riddled with bullets in what looked like a professional coup. The attack was widely condemned internationally, as well as by Iranian officials, who swore revenge against the United States and Israel, whom they blamed for the murder.

Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.