I kind of suspect this is more a desperate regime on the brink of (at least military) collapse grasping at straws.
Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives.
If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that such a serious opsec issue would require immediate action.
If they just figured this out right now, its a bit hard to imagine how that happened given how disruptive the bombing campaign has been.
Potentially they might be worried about anti-regime activists organizing on whatsapp and want to push people to more easily monitoriable alternatives.
If iran knew meta was doing this for a long time, then it raises the question of why they are just asking people to delete it now. One would presume that such a serious opsec issue would require immediate action.
If they just figured this out right now, its a bit hard to imagine how that happened given how disruptive the bombing campaign has been.
The timing just seems really suspicious to me.