Iran Promotes New Messaging App Featuring Death To America Emoji

Iran is promoting a new messaging app which features a ‘death to America’ emoji.

It’s part of a bid to encourage millions of Iranian citizens to quit Telegram - a secure instant messager which can’t be snooped on by authorities.

The government blame the app for allowing the spread of unrest in the country.

Some 50 million Iranians are thought to use Telegram, which uses end-to-end encryption to keep messages secure and private.


But Ayatollah Khamenei himself this week quit Telegram, encouraging followers to use the new Soroush messenger instead.

Alongside familiar features like instant messages, groups and news feeds - the Ayatollah approved app provides users with a string of handy emoji.
Among the images are a series of pictures of women wearing veils. One shows the woman holding a sign declaring “death to America”.
The app even comes with a tool to migrate all of the user’s previously secure messages onto the new platform.

But Telegram users are wary Soroush leaves their conversation open to Government surveillance.

The app features a ‘three tick’ notification to show when a message has been received and read - similar to the two tick system used by Telegram.

Users have joked that the first tick is for the message being sent, the second for it being read by the person you sent it to, and the third to show it’s been read by Iranian security services personnel.