- Twitter suspended the account of Iran's supreme leader after he tweeted a threatening message to former US President Donald Trump.
- The post from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei featured an image of an ominous aircraft flying over a golfer resembling Trump.
- The post, which appeared to call for attacks to avenge the murder of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani by a US drone last year, included the words "revenge is inevitable."
Twitter suspended the account of Iran's supreme leader after he appeared to threaten former US President Donald Trump over the killing of a top Iranian military commander.
The image that accompanied the Thursday post appears to have been first published by Tasnim News Agency, which has strong ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The post says "revenge is inevitable." The tweet has since been deleted.
In the picture, the shadow of an aircraft can be seen over a golfer that resembles Trump, whose presidency ended Wednesday. On his first day out of the White House, Trump headed to Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach.
On Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei re-shared the image, which featured his remarks from a December tweet calling for revenge for the murder of IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
"Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished," Khamenei tweeted. "This revenge will certainly happen at the right time."
In early January last year, the US military acting on the orders of then-President Trump conducted a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani as punishment for past actions against US military and civilian personnel, as well as deterrence for planned future actions.
"At my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani," Trump said in a statement following the strike.
In response to the death of one of Iran's most notorious military leaders, Iranian forces launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at US and coalition forces. As no one was killed in the attack, tensions between the US and Iran did not escalate further.
There were concerns, though, that Iran might move to take retaliatory action on the anniversary of the assassination. As a deterrent, the US military positioned heavily-armed naval assets in the Persian Gulf and regularly flew bombers through the area.
Iran did not act aggressively, but there has been hostile rhetoric from Iranian leadership. On Friday, Khameini's Twitter account was suspended for violating the platform's rules.
Before Trump's tumultuous presidency ended this week, Twitter permanently suspended his personal Twitter account for inciting violence, including riots at the US Capitol.
