Twitter has removed a tweet by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggesting coronavirus vaccines made in the United States and Britain are “untrustworthy”, saying the post violated its rules.

“Importing vaccines made in the US or the UK is prohibited. They're completely untrustworthy. It's not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations,” said a tweet posted on Khamenei's English-language Twitter account.

“Given our experience with France's HIV-tainted blood supplies, French vaccines aren't trustworthy either,” the Iranian leader added in the tweet with the hashtag #CoronaVaccine.

Twitter later removed the tweet and replaced it with a message that said it was “no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules”, according to AFP.

“The account owner will be required to delete the violative Tweet before regaining access to their account,” the spokesperson for Twitter said.