Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has justified his decision to allow the likes of Iran's supreme leader on his social media platform, X as a "UN exclusion rule".

Speaking on the Joe Rogan podcast, he said: "We do have a kind of UN exclusion rule: you can have, say, the Ayatollah who would prefer that Israel didn't exist, but he's allowed to go to the UN building in New York. Generally, officials from Iran do go to the UN building even though they're a heavily sanctioned country.

"But you do want to have the leaders of countries represented on social media. You want to hear what they have to say, even if what they say is terrible."

Following a Hamas attack on Israel in early October, Musk used his X platform to call on Iran's Ali Khamenei to change his anti-Israel stance. Musk's response came in the wake of a large-scale terrorist invasion of Israel of thousands of Hamas troops which resulted in the murder of 1,400 mostly civilians and the kidnap of 240 more into Gaza. 

"Khamenei’s official position is clear that the eradication of Israel is the actual goal, not just supporting Palestinians," Musk said one day after the atrocities which were the most deadly single day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.

X stated that Khamenei's post of October 8, in which he shared video footage of hundreds of festival-goers fleeing the massacre of Hamas militia had "violated" X's rules, but stated it was in the public interest to keep the post accessible.