Twitter on Sunday announced it has suspended several accounts held by Iranian news agencies citing alleged harassment of people who follow the Baha'i faith.
The Farsi-language accounts of the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency; the Young Journalists Club (YJC), run by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting; and Mehr News Agency were suspended, the social media giant said.
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Some agencies, including Fars agency and English-language Press TV, remained active on the site.
According to the BBC, the affected agencies speculated that the suspensions were linked to their coverage of tensions in the Persian Gulf between Iran and the West.
A Twitter source confirmed to several news outlets that the accounts were suspended for the "coordinated and targeted harassment of people associated with Baha'i," which is a minority faith in Iran.
The Baha'i community in Iran numbers over 300,000, but Tehran does not recognize the religion, and its followers are harassed, prosecuted and imprisoned, Human Rights Watch said.
Twitter is banned in Iran, but many people continue to access it by using VPNs,
YJC linked the suspension to the brewing crisis in the Gulf, saying, "Many users believe that this is happening because of British pressure on the operators of this social network."
Mehr, a semiofficial news agency, said on its website that its Twitter accounts had been suspended "following publishing the seizure of a UK oil tanker by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the Strait of Hormuz."
