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ISNA news agency did not give a reason for the government ban on
the service which lets people send encrypted messages and has an
estimated 40 million users in the Islamic Republic.
The order came days after Russia - Iran's ally in the Syrian war
- started blocking the app in its territory following the
company's repeated refusal to give Russian state security
services access to users' secret messages.
Iran's government banned "all state bodies from using the
foreign messaging app," according to ISNA.
Khamenei stopped using Telegram on Wednesday "in line with
safeguarding national interests and removing the monopoly of the
Telegram messaging app," state media reported.
The Supreme Leader has a strong presence on social media, even
on Twitter and Facebook that are blocked in Iran. His office
updates the accounts with photos and his latest speeches.
Telegram, set up by a Russian entrepreneur and ranked the
world's ninth most popular mobile messaging app, has been widely
used by Iranian state media, politicians and companies.
A judicial official said this week that Telegram and other
foreign messaging services could only operate in Iran if they
got permission from the government and saved users' data inside
the country.
Iran temporarily blocked the service in January as security
forces sought to contain anti-government protests in more than
80 cities.
Many Iranians kept accessing Telegram then, using virtual
private networks (VPNs) and other tools to bypass government
filtering.
The service is widely used in countries across the Middle East
and the former Soviet Union.
(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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