Facebook and Twitter became available in Iran because of…

For those who didn’t know initially, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were banned in Iran in 2009 after the Iranian government claimed social media aided the protests that broke out in 2009 as a result of the re-election of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term.

The new president Hassan Rouhani came into government in August and there are expectations he could reduce the ban on social media as he promised during his campaigns.

However, on Monday, Iranians were able to access Facebook and Twitter for the first time in four years without using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass the country’s firewall.

This was short-lived as the firewall was back on Tuesday. Iranian officials have now claimed that Iran didn’t pull down its firewall and there was access to the sites because of a technical glitch.

“The lack of a filter on Facebook last night was apparently due to technical problems and the technological committee is investigating this issue,” Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, secretary of state panel that filters sites, told Iran’s Mehr news agency.

There were reports that one of the internet service providers (ISPs) slipped up. Abdolsamad claimed this is under investigation.

“We are investigating which of companies has done this.” he said.

There have been rumours that Iran intentionally removed the firewall to see how Iranians would behave on the social sites but some analysts have claimed (which makes sense) it could never have been Iran since porn sites were also available during the glitch.

President Rouhani will have to get approval from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whenever he wants to make any changes to Iran’s internet censorship.

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