Iran says Telegram transfers servers, but CEO denies it

Iran's communications and information technology minister was quoted Sunday as saying the widely used Telegram messenger service has transferred some of its servers into the country, but the encrypted application's founder swiftly denied the claim, Fox news reported.

The report from Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Mahmoud Vaezi as saying: "As a result of meetings with Telegram managers, some of its servers have been moved to the country."

But Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said that's not so, reiterating the company's previous position in a Twitter message to AP on Sunday..

"No Telegram servers will be moved to Iran," he wrote, while providing a link to an earlier post.

Vaezi said Telegram planned to use third-party caching nodes, called CDNs, in Iran in the near future.

But Durov said CDNs, which internet-based services like Telegram use to make data available faster, "have nothing to do with relocating Telegram servers or complying with unreasonable local laws." Those nodes are not able to decipher encrypted messages sent by Telegram, he said.