According to Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Minister, Mahmoud Vaezi, there are approximately 13 million to 14 million users of the messaging service Telegram in Iran. The comments were made Oct. 25 in a joint press conference with Russian minister of communications and mass media, Nikolai Nikiforov. Vaezi said that Iran and Russia would continue to work together on “security and policy” and the Russian search engine Yandex would soon open up an office in Tehran.
The meeting between the two ministers comes a week after the co-founder of Telegram, Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, took to Twitter to accuse Iran’s Information and Communications Technology Ministry of requesting “spying and censorship tools” from the company. After Iran's request was denied, Iran blocked Telegram, according to Durov, who now lives in exile after clashing with Russian authorities over their increasing control of the Internet.
