The video sharing platform Youtube has removed a channel said to be owned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Iran's official IRNA news agency said in a Tuesday report that IR Diplomacy, a channel it said was the official account of the Ministry on Youtube, had been removed by the US-based media platform.
It published a screenshot of the message posted by Youtube after removing the channel which indicated that the owner of the channel had violated Youtube’s “violent criminal organization policy”.
“We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our violent criminal organization policy. Because of this, we have removed your channel from Youtube,” it said.
The IRNA report said Youtube’s action had been taken shortly after IR Diplomacy released a video entitled “Resistance, Palestine's only option”.
US-based social media platforms, including Google-owned Youtube, Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram and X, have repeatedly suspended or removed Iran-based channels and pages under the pretext of opposing violence and terrorism.
Such bans have intensified since the start of an Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territory of Gaza in October as the Iranian people and government have been outspoken in their support for Palestine.
Instagram announced in February that it had suspended the official pages of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in a move many said was influenced by pro-Israeli groups.
Ayatollah Kahmenei’s Persian-language account on Instagram had more than 5.1 million followers while his English-language account had more than 204,000 when they were taken down by Meta.