TEHRAN, Iran — On Saturday. Sept. 14, the Facebook page of Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif was hacked for a few hours. A passionate post in support of those killed in the 2009 post-election unrest, along with harsh criticism directed at the Islamic system and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was written on Zarif’s behalf. A few hours later the comment was deleted and Zarif wrote that his page was “illegally entered” and, “If this situation continues, I might have to shut down my Facebook page.”

More and more Facebook accounts appear claiming to belong to members of President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet, and they are encountering problems and creating controversy, surprisingly forcing the Iranian government to re-examine its views against a medium that was much maligned after the 2009 election protests.

It was not that long ago in November 2011 that Iranian authorities held an exhibition in which Facebook, along with YouTube and Google, were literally stoned, mirroring the stoning of the devil ritual in hajj pilgrimage. But now much has changed, apparently.

Iran’s foreign minister Zarif joined Facebook in February 2009. However, he maintained a limited presence until after Rouhani's election. Now, his page has over 200,000 Likes, still far behind the 300,000 members of 2009 presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi who, along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, has been under house arrest for almost 1,000 days. Although the Twitter account of Zarif has been verified, his Facebook page (which he says is managed by him and his family) has still not been verified. He told usersvia Twitter that he would be using Twitter to communicate in English and Facebook to communicate in Persian, although he has written Facebook posts in English from time to time.