Hassan Rouhani Twitter account deletes Obama tweets

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/28/hassan-rouhan-twitter-deletes-obama

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A Twitter account belonging to Hassan Rouhani broke news of a historic phone call between the Iranian president and Barack Obama on Friday – but within hours the friendly tweets he shared with the US president were deleted and replaced with something a little more humdrum.

The original tweets posted Friday afternoon on the English-language Twitter account reflected a friendly and bantering tone to the conversation. One of the tweets said Rouhani had concluded the phone call by telling Obama to "have a nice day!" and Obama had thanked him and said goodbye in Persian – "Khodahafez", which means "God go with you".

They recounted a conversation in which Obama was reported to have said to Rouhani: "I express my respect for you and ppl of #iran. I'm convinced that relations between Iran and US will greatly affect region. If we can make progress on #nuclear file, other issues such as #Syria will certainly be positively affected."

Obama was said to have finished the conversation with a light-hearted jab at New York traffic: "I wish you a safe and pleasant journey and apologize if you're experiencing the [horrendous] traffic in #NYC."

The entire exchange was captured in a screengrab by Buzzfeed reporter Andrew Kaczynski before it was deleted.

The replacement tweet simply said the presidents "expressed their mutual political #will to rapidly solve the #nuclear issue":

In phone convo, President #Rouhani and President @BarackObama expressed their mutual political #will to rapidly solve the #nuclear issue.

It was followed by a photo of a cheerful-looking Rouhani aboard his flight home to Tehran:

After historic phone conversation with @BarackObama, President #Rouhani in plane abt to depart for Tehran. #UNGA pic.twitter.com/TFtLWxbbaV

A followup tweet managed to combine Twitter shorthand with diplomatic language: "FMs tasked w/ follow-up to expedite coop"

#Obama, #Rouhani agreed ground shud b prepared 4 solving of other issues, incl regional matters. FMs tasked w/ follow-up to expedite coop

The account with more than 80,000 followers has not been officially verified to belong to Rouhani but is thought to be run by Rouhani's aides. A senior administration official confirmed that Rouhani's Twitter feed had accurately reflected the tone of the conversation, and noted: "We'll be continuing to watch that Twitter account."

Twitter, like most major social media sites, is blocked in Iran.

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