https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180502/12094039761/as-iran-joins-russias-block-telegram-echoes-arab-spring-begin-to-sound.shtml

As we have been discussing, Russia has engaged in something of an insane attempt to obliterate the application Telegram from its lands, following the company's refusal to hand over its encryption keys to Russia's FSB. Where this got really insane was Russia deciding to block hundreds of thousands of IP addresses, many of which are those of Amazon as Telegram had moved to the company's cloud service to get around the initial Russia blockade. As a huge swath of the internet in Russia subsequently broke, along with all sorts of Russian services that rely on the internet to function, many began to wonder what could be so severe in Telegram to warrant such a cluster bomb approach. Russia's answer was, of course, terrorism. The truth came in the form of a wave of protests in Russia, signaling that disallowing anti-government coordination via an encrypted messaging service is and always was the goal.

And now Iran has mirrored the approach of its international partner, blocking Telegram in its country as well. The sales pitch to the public as to the need to block Telegram is also the twin of the Russian approach.