Posted on 06/11/2018 9:23:45 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
When Iran’s supreme leader tweeted criticism of Israel on Sunday, Israel’s embassy in the United States fired back with an image from the movie “Mean Girls” to poke fun at Ayatollah Khamenei.
While dismissed as internet trolling, experts say the embassy snark is part of a pattern of internet diplomacy increasingly used around the world amid a resurgence of populist rhetoric.
Governments seek to please their most vocal political bases domestically are becoming cavalier with how they communicate with countries abroad — at least online.
In 2013, as Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani was publicly signaling a willingness to negotiate a nuclear deal, the Israeli Embassy tweeted a link to a parody LinkedIn account it made for Rouhani.
The profile described the Iranian president as an “Expert Salesman, PR Professional and Nuclear Proliferation Advocate,” and listed professional skills like “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” “Ballistics” and “Military Justice.”
Iran has sought to fight fire with fire — or trolling with trolling in this case.
In one of the more memorable examples, Khamenei took to Instagram after President Trump scrapped the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran to show a picture of himself reading “Fire and Fury,” a controversial book that detailed the extreme dysfunction of Trump’s White House.
ETC...
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