Iranian news agency IRNA has reported Tehren will block the popular messenger service Telegram within a few days.
Irna reports the decision was taken to shut down the service for reasons of national security.
Telegram messaging service will be replaced by a national messenger within days, Head of Majlis (parliament) Foreign Policy and National Security Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said.
According to him, the decision was made at “the highest level” and the app would be replaced by a local system.
Boroujerdi said the decision was a response to what he called Telegram’s destructive role in anti-government protests that began in late December in which at least 25 people were killed and nearly 5,000 reportedly arrested, AP reported.
The app, with some 40 million users in Iran, was temporarily shut down during the protests in early January. However, about 10 percent of users reached it through proxies and VPN services.
Irna meanwhile also quoted Iranian MP as having said: “We have the potential to introduce Soroush messenger which is a national messaging service.”
Telegram is a non-profit cloud-based instant messaging service. Telegram client apps are available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows NT, macOS and Linux.