ALBAWABA - As anti-regime protests erupt in Iran, a video circulating on social media recently went viral, capturing an Iranian woman burning a photo of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and lighting a cigarette with it.
The viral video sparked a trend among other young Iranian women, who then flooded several social media platforms with clips imitating the woman in question by also setting a photo of Khamenei on fire and lighting a cigarette with it.
This comes in response to the ongoing anti-regime protests taking place across Iran and by Iranian immigrants residing in other countries across the globe. Another trend circulating on social media had people replacing the icon on the Iranian flag with a lion and sun, a symbol used in the old flag of Iran until the 1979 revolution.
Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) also joined the trend by replacing the current Iranian flag with the lion and sun, causing current politicians to remove it from their accounts.
Video: Iranian woman burns Khamenei photo amid anti-regime protests
According to Iran International, at least 2000 people have died during the ongoing anti-regime protests in the past 48 hours.
Several reports indicate that the woman who started the trend in question reportedly burned Khamenei's photo in Toronto, Canada, with accounts sharing a screenshot of her X account.
X user Ryan Rozbiani described the video as "propaganda," as he took the matter into his own hands by "debunking" it.
He wrote, "You’ve probably seen the photo of this girl burning the picture of Iran’s Ayatollah." Rozbiani added, "Many people said that this was in Iran, BUT it turned out that this woman lives and filmed this video in Canada."
Another X user, called Megatron, claimed that the video reportedly dates back to 2022 and was filmed in Canada without providing evidence to follow their claims.
