Iran’s ICT Ministry on Saturday confirmed that Telegram has been officially unblocked a few days after the restrictions on Instagram and a number of other services like Pinterest, Reddit, Four Square, Zoho, and SoundCloud were lifted.
As a messaging app with 40 million users in Iran, Telegram was blocked following the recent unrest, but officials vowed to open it as soon as possible.
The temporary filtering came after the messenger refused to block a channel that promotes violence and riot in the Islamic Republic.
Telegram had actually closed the anti-Iran channel, named Amad News, for encouraging people to violence after a top Iranian official’s request. The channel, with over 1.3 million followers, was blocked by Telegram after it tried to provoke Iranian people to use violent actions against the Islamic Establishment amid the recent protests.
However, Amad News started its operation in a new channel, and Telegram refused to remove the new one, claiming that the new channel has not yet violated the app’s Terms of Service. This prompted the Iranian government to restrict Telegram temporarily until peace is restored to the country.
