A March 3, 2020 tweet by the Twitter account associated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force commander Esmail Qaani called on "the government of India to prevent the genocide of its Muslim citizens and to prevent these crimes." The tweet went on to warn: "The Qods Force defends the Muslims all over the world."
Later that day, the Iranian news agency SNN, which is affiliated with the IRGC, published statements by IRGC spokesman Gen. Ramazan Sharif noting that the above Twitter account is fake and that Qaani has no social media accounts at all.
However, a Twitter search for the handle @SARDAR_Ghaani – a Persian spelling of Qaani – brings up two Twitter accounts under this name; one of them was created in the past few days and the other has been made private and cannot be examined.
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Below is a screenshot of the above tweet with "Fake" stamped on it, from the SNN news agency.[1]
[1] T.me/www_snn_ir/130878, March 3, 2020.
