Financial Tribune- The Minister of Communication and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi has called for unblocking people�s access to Twitter.

According to local technology website Digiato, Vaezi said, �Since several Iranian officials actively use Twitter, the authorities should reconsider blocking the service.� Blocked in Iran since 2009, Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with �tweets�, restricted to 140 characters.

Twitter is very popular with celebrities and politicians around the world, with President Hassan Rouhani, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif actively using the service. Vaezi�s comments were echoed by a lawmaker, Parvaneh Salahshori. She noted the important role Twitter can play in access to reliable news.

Twitter is not very popular with Iranians, with services like Telegram messenger, which was launched a few years ago and is not blocked, becoming the defacto social media platform in the country. Data shows Telegram Messenger now has 170,000 Persian-language channels, 11,000 of which have more than 5,000 members. An estimated 45 million Iranians actively use the app.