Whatsapp, the massively popular instant messaging application, was recently acquired by Facebook for a huge sum of 19 billion dollars. The deal has not even closed, but troubles already seem to be starting to pile up for the company, starting with this – Iran, officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran, has censored Whatsapp in its country, citing “Zionist” Zuckerberg as the reason for the ban.
Iran and Israel have had a tumultuous relationship for a long time, as the former has literally failed to recognize the state of Israel ever since the great Iranian revolution overthrew the pro-western government. Since then, both the countries have been involved in proxy war and constantly issue threats against each other. For example, Iran has been believed to secretly provide weapons to the Hezbollah militants, who have been attacking Israel from Lebanon as a part of the Palestine conflict. Also, most of the Islamic states in the region fail to recognize Israel because of this conflict, and usually are wary of using Internet services altogether, to suppress free speech in their regions. Social media has since played a major role in the recent Arab Spring movements that have rocked the region.
Iran had already blocked Facebook and Twitter in their country, and this recent ban comes as no surprise, but the reason cited should be worrying for Whatsapp, as a company. Mark Zuckerberg, a Jew by birth, has not spoken about his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, so this ban makes less sense. Even worse is the fact that there is misunderstanding even within the country, as Iran’s communications minister Mahmoud Mehr is reportedly completely against the ban, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz –
The government is completely against the ban on WhatsApp
The same minister has vowed to ease the restrictions on Facebook and Twitter as well, while Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, secretary of Iran’s Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, instituted this ban, for which the reason “is the adoption of WhatsApp by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is an American Zionist,”. While people are finding many ways to use the services despite the ban, it seems like this will go on for a while. As long as the middle east is embroiled in the politics of oil, territorial disputes and religious cleansing, we can expect these bans and censors to have an effect on the population, but lets hope sense prevails, over the course of time.
vai WaPo