What Iranians Do in 180,000 Telegram Channels

“Today the Intelligence Ministry can monitor all web pages in Iran,” Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said, according to a Farsi report by Basij Press.

“We don’t interfere, though, unless the country’s Establishment is threatened.”

“Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter are the most popular social networks among Iranians,” he noted.

“Actually, there are 180,000 active Iranian channels in Telegram. Our observations show that 90% of them are used as a medium for communication with friends and family.”

He went on to say that 7% of channels are political, and the other 3% have immoral or blasphemous content: 2.5% publish obscenities, and 0.5% work on anti-religion topics.

“We have identified and arrested the administrators of many anti-religious channel,” Alavi stressed. “The obscene channels are also banned after being reported to the Telegram central administration in Germany.”

“While the anti-religious channels have few visitors, Dua-ye Faraj – a prayer for the reappearance of Imam Mahdi [AS], the last Shiite Imam – once had 14 million viewers in a channel: it shows that our youth are neither anti-religious, nor obscene.”