Twitter suspends account that tweeted threat to Trump

Twitter said Monday that it had suspended an account purporting to belong to Iran’s supreme leader after it tweeted an image depicting former President Trump under the ominous shadow of a stealth bomber.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that the account was suspended permanently due to violations of both the site’s content policies as well as policies governing “the creation of fake accounts.” It wasn’t clear how Twitter officials had determined the authenticity of the account.

“The Tweet referenced is in violation of our abusive behaviour policy, and the account you referenced (khamenei_site) violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts, and has been permanently suspended,” read the statement.

The tweet from the account posted Thursday contained text quoting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from December, when Iran’s supreme leader issued a veiled threat vowing retribution for the death of Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who was killed by U.S. forces in Iraq last year. Fox News reported that the same image was shared by an English-language site owned by Iran’s government.

“Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” read a statement quoted in the image.

The posting of the image came as Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has called for dialogue with the Biden administration and a return to the 2015 nuclear accord struck under the Obama administration, which the U.S. exited in 2017 under Trump.

“Today, we expect the incoming U.S. administration to return to the rule of law and commit themselves, and if they can, in the next four years, to remove all the black spots of the previous four years,” Rouhani said last week.