Khamenei criticized the half a billion dollar imports of iPhones in the previous Iranian calendar year during a video conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Национальное производство – главный ключ к занятости, благополучию, росту национальной валюты. Одним из препятствий на пути производства является безудержный импорт и импорт предметов роскоши. В прошлом году на импорт только американских смартфонов было потрачено около $0.5 млрд.
— Аятолла Хаменеи (@Khameneiru) August 23, 2020
The Iranian leader stressed that "there is no need for importing the phones" and ordered the government to halt the imports.
The remarks on the matter were removed from a text published by his office and from his Persian Twitter account a few hours after the meeting. His Russian-language Twitter account tweeted the criticism of imports of "luxury American commodities" from an iPhone on Sunday.
While many foreign technologies and services are banned in the Islamic Republic, Iranian officials have been caught using them themselves multiple times.
In August of last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif invited Iranians in a post on his Instagram to watch a TED talk he gave at an independently organized TEDx event on Youtube. Both Instagram and Youtube are banned in the Islamic Republic.
Iran has blocked access to tens of thousands of sites and services including Twitter and Facebook, although many users use virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy sites to bypass the filter.