Al-Monitor - Iran’s newly inaugurated parliament is pushing for a new ban on the country’s already restricted social media, a campaign that critics view as a war on the free flow of information.

Heated debates during last week's parliament meeting in Tehran are fueling concerns among millions of Iranians that the newly elected conservative lawmakers are prioritizing restrictions on social media over more urgent economic woes, which they had promised to address upon taking their seats.

The session saw Iran’s young Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi cornered and grilled by powerful hard-line parliamentarians, including the speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. In their ferocious attacks, the lawmakers particularly took aim at the popular social media platform Instagram, which is being used by an estimated half of the population in a country of 84 million.

“It has turned into the killing ground of the religious convictions of our young generation,” ultraconservative lawmaker Mousa Ghazanfarabadi said of Instagram, the only Western social media network to so far survive the Islamic Republic’s strict bans.

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