Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu follows – and quickly unfollows – Iranian ‘hot sex books’ Twitter feed

Iranian public relishes opportunity to poke fun at Bibi after he last week slammed the ‘fact’ that they are not allowed to wear jeans

A screenshot showing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Twitter profile and the feed he has followed most recently - a 'library for hot sex books in the Persian language' (TWITTER/ILANBENZION)

A portal for Iranian sex literature has become the latest Twitter feed to join the exclusive list of embassies, agencies and official accounts followed by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At 1am on Sunday morning The Times of Israel reported that despite only following some 90 profiles, Mr Netanyahu now subscribed to the tweets of @PersianHotBook, which describes itself as “the first library of hot sex books [in the] Persian language”.

Seven hours later Mr Netanyahu seemed to have changed his mind about how much he was interested in the sex education of the Iranian people, and unfollowed the feed.

But that wasn’t fast enough to stop a large number of eagle-eyed tweeters taking and sharing screenshots, and Iranian users particularly seemed to enjoy having a joke at the Israeli leader’s expense.

The prime minister’s office quickly denied any responsibility for the official @netanyahu profile, before the central committee for Likud, Mr Netanyahu’s centre-right political party, admitted it runs the account.

According to a tweet by reporter Chico Menashe from Israel Radio, Likud said the action to follow @PersianHotBook was a “malfunction” that is now being investigated.

This is the second time in a week that Iranians have taken the opportunity to mock Mr Netanyahu on social media. After the Israeli leader said in an interview on BBC Persian TV that people in Iran won’t be free until they are allowed to wear jeans, thousands posted pictures of themselves wearing them, and others posed in Iranian shops with wall-to-wall denim.

Since the incident yesterday, Mr Netanyahu now seems to have had a bit of a twitter cull – he’s down to following just 81 feeds. He is followed by more than 175,000 people.