Ahmad Khatami, Tehran’s interim Friday prayer leader, said in Friday prayer sermons that the Internet had been cut off in Yemen so that the voice of the country’s oppressed people could not be heard.
The remarks of this Friday prayer leader appointed by Khamenei regarding the internet shutdown in Yemen are made while the Islamic regime of Iran has repeatedly disrupted or completely cut off the internet during the popular protests in Iran.
Ahmad Khatami defended the internet shutdown after the bloody suppression of the protests in 2019 and said in Tehran Friday prayers: “One of the commendable measures in this case was the internet cutoff. If the authorities want to understand the importance of the work, see how upset the enemy and foreign networks are about this event. This means they identified the wasp nest.
I urge them (the government) to strengthen domestic messengers and launch the native Internet as soon as possible. If you fail in this, you will have no answer before God. I ask you not to open the internet. You saw that people were being taught crime.”
The internet in Yemen has been cut off in recent days following the damage to a telecommunications center in Hodeidah due to an airstrike by Saudi-led coalition forces. The attack was in retaliation for drone and missile attacks by Houthi terrorists backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and as a result, the internet in parts of Yemen has been cut off for the past four days.
