Iranian leaders are turning to social media to voice diplomatic concerns during the ongoing talks on the country's nuclear program in Geneva, Switzerland.
In exchange for sanctions relief in the oil and banking sectors, which have taken a toll on its economy, Iran is considering a six-month deal that curbs uranium enrichment to 20% purity and limits work at its nuclear facilities.
See also: The New Website That Makes the Case for Iran's Nuclear Energy Program
The last round of talks, two weeks ago, failed to reach an agreement due to decades of mistrust between Iran and world leaders and the country's push for the "right" to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
This time around, however, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif turned to YouTube to promote his country's nuclear program.
"For us Iranians, nuclear energy is not about joining a club or threatening others. Nuclear energy is about a leap, a jump toward deciding our own destiny. Rather than allowing others to decide for us. For us, nuclear energy is about securing the future of our children, about diversifying our economy, about stopping the burning of our oil and about generating clean power," Zarif said in the video, featured below.

The video, which was posted Tuesday, is just one of several social efforts that Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani, who replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, have implemented to promote diplomacy and transparency online. And despite the fact that Twitter is blocked in Iran, both leaders are also active on the social network.
"The new Iranian government’s use of social media has generated a whole new buzz about the world’s only modern theocracy and altering at least part of its image in the meantime," says Robin Wright, a journalist and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
As Iran's only political official with a verified Twitter account, Zarif actively shares the Rouhani administration's foreign policy objectives. In September, he used the account to wish Jews around the world a "Happy Rosh Hashana," an anomaly compared to the anti-Semitic rhetoric of former President Ahmadinejad. Zarif's Persian-language Facebook page also has more than 600,000 followers.
Although unverified on Twitter, President Rouhani reportedly maintains an active English account, posting updates on negotiations with Western leaders. He tweeted 10 times in a single day during the second round of negotiations in Geneva this month.
The account also promotes the emergence of a new nuclear energy English site that provides information on the history, motives, legal aspects and controversies about Iran's nuclear program.
Iranian leaders' new use of online communication is, according to Wright, "the most ambitious public diplomacy campaign since the 1979 revolution," when the five-decade reign of the Pahlavi dynasty came to an end.
An agreement on the country's nuclear program has yet to be determined in the third round of talks between Iran and the six-nation group that includes the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.
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Image: ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images