Report: Iran Says Twitter Ready to Discuss Unblocking Site

TEHRAN (AP) —
Iran Twitter
In this June 15, 2009, photo, hundreds of thousands of supporters of leading opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims there was voting fraud in the presidential election, turn out to protest the result of the election at a mass rally in Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

Iran’s new telecommunications minister says Twitter is ready to talk about unblocking access to the microblogging site.

The state-owned IRAN newspaper quoted Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi on Tuesday as saying Twitter has “officially announced readiness to talk with Iran for resolving the problems.”

San Francisco-based Twitter declined to comment.

Iran blocked the site, along with other social-media sites, after mass protests and violence over the 2009 re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by current President Hassan Rouhani, officially is in charge of blocking websites. That council is overseen by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad, Rouhani and Khamenei all have Twitter accounts administered on their behalf. Others in Iran use virtual private networks to subvert the ban.

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