What was claimed
A video showing a woman lighting a cigarette from a burning portrait of the Supreme Leader of Iran was filmed in Iran.
Our verdict
This is incorrect. The clip was actually recorded in a town near Toronto, Canada.
Video of woman burning portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader was filmed in Canada
A video of a woman lighting a cigarette from a burning portrait of the Supreme Leader of Iran has been shared with false claims that the footage was filmed in the country.
A sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency against the US dollar sparked protests in Iran in December, which have since expanded into demonstrations against the regime, which has been led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since 1989.
Captions shared with the video on Instagram and Facebook say: “This image from Iran is so powerful.”
But although this video does appear to show a real protest act against the Supreme Leader, it was not filmed in Iran.
The video was originally posted on 9 January 2026 by an account on X with a location marker placing them in Ontario in Canada. The user, who resembles the woman in the footage, writes many posts in Persian, and includes the pre-1979 ‘Lion and Sun’ Iranian flag in her display name.
The background visible in the video matches a spot in Richmond Hill, a town outside of Toronto.
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The woman gave an interview to Portuguese news agency Lusa on 10 January in which she confirmed the video had been recorded in Toronto. She said she “never claimed to be in Iran” and filmed the video to show her opposition to the regime, which she claimed she fled in March 2025.
While some people online have claimed that the clip was filmed in 2022 using Google Lens reverse image search results, Full Fact could find no evidence to support this.
Although there has been genuine footage verified of the anti-government protests in Iran, a near-total internet blackout there is also making it difficult for people to share content or document protests from within the country. For this reason it’s been difficult to establish a death toll, but a US-based human rights agency said on 13 January that it had confirmed the deaths of 2,403 protesters, and was reviewing reports of hundreds more.
During breaking news events it’s important to rely on sources that are trustworthy and verifiable before sharing content which you see on social media. Our toolkit has tips on how to do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video was filmed in Canada, not Iran.