Four Republican senators, led by Ted Cruz, sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey urging him to ban the accounts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
In addition to the Texas senator, the letter was signed by Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
The four argue in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, that banning Khamenei, Zarif, and other regime accounts would be in compliance with an executive order that President Trump signed last year that imposes sanctions on Khamenei and those acting on his behalf.
“All Americans — including you and Twitter are prohibited from ‘the making of any contribution or provision of … goods or services’ to them,” the senators wrote.
“While the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of Americans — and Twitter should not be censoring the political speech of Americans — the Ayatollah enjoys zero protection from the United States Bill of Rights,” they continued.
“And, as the leader of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of US citizens — the Ayatollah and any American companies providing him assistance are entirely subject to US sanctions laws,” the group said.
“This letter is just one example of Senator Cruz’s fight in the Senate to hold technology companies like Twitter accountable,” a spokesperson for Cruz told the Washington Examiner. “Companies that exploit special protections from liability under U.S. law to censor the political speech of those with whom they disagree while at the same time allowing the Ayatollah to propagandize an anti-American agenda on their platforms. As Sens. Cruz, Cotton, Blackburn, and Rubio make clear in the letter, for far too long, brutal regimes like the Ayatollah Khamenei have been empowered and strengthened at the expense of the Iranian people. Twitter is at risk of violating U.S. sanctions and should immediately cut off the Twitter accounts for members of the Iranian regime.”
The senators said that while President Barack Obama’s administration “created an exception for services and software incident to Internet-based communications,” it doesn’t apply to Iranian government officials “designated as a Specially Designated National (SDN) by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for reasons other than being an Iranian government official.”
The move comes during increased tensions between the United States and Iran. Last month, a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops during the Iraq War.
Iran retaliated for the strike by firing more than a dozen missiles at two bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the group of senators for comment. A spokesman for Rubio said that the senator is letting the letter speak for itself for now.
Twitter declined to comment when contacted.
