She speak photo afire, lit cigarette –

LONDON (AP) — With one puff of a cigarette, a lady in Canada grew to change into a world symbol of defiance in opposition to Iran’s bloody crackdown on dissent — and the world saw the flame.

A video that has long gone viral in recent days shows the lady — who described herself as an Iranian refugee — snapping originate a lighter and atmosphere the flame to a photo she holds. It ignites, illuminating the visage of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s best cleric. Then the lady dips a cigarette into the glow, takes a rapidly recede — and lets what stays of the report tumble to the pavement.

Whether or no longer staged or a spontaneous act of defiance — and there’s a total lot of debate — the video has change into considered one of many defining photos of the protests in Iran in opposition to the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy, as U.S. President Donald Trump considers defense power action in the nation all every other time.

The gesture has jumped from the virtual world to the true one, with opponents of the regime lighting fixtures cigarettes on photos of the ayatollah from Israel to Germany and Switzerland to the United States.

In the 34 seconds of footage, many across platforms worship X, Instagram and Reddit saw one person defy a series of the theocracy’s authorized pointers and norms in a riveting act of autonomy. She wears no hijab, three years after the “Ladies folk, Lifestyles, Freedom” protests in opposition to the regime’s required headscarves.

She burns an report of Iran’s supreme chief, a crime in the Islamic republic punishable by death. Her curly hair cascades — yet yet another transgression in the Iranian govt’s eyes. She lights a cigarette from the flame — a gesture belief about arrogant in Iran.

And in those few seconds, circulated and amplified a million instances over, she steps into historical past.

A conflict for yarn administration

In 2026, social media is a central battleground for yarn administration over conflicts. Protesters in Iran articulate the unrest is a demonstration in opposition to the regime’s strictures and competence. Iran has lengthy solid it as a local by outsiders worship United States and Israel to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

And every facet are racing to converse the fable of it that can endure.

Iranian speak media announces wave after wave of arrests by authorities, concentrated on those it calls “terrorists” and additionally it appears taking a query for Starlink satellite tv for computer web dishes, the handiest device to fetch movies and photos out to the web. There became once evidence on Thursday that the regime’s bloody crackdown had severely smothered the dissent after activists acknowledged it had killed as a minimal 2,615 of us. That figure dwarfs the death toll from any other spherical of impart or unrest in Iran in a long time and remembers the mayhem of the nation’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Social media has bloomed with photos of of us lighting fixtures cigarettes from photos of Iran’s chief. “Smoke ’em whereas you occur to got ’em. #Iran,” posted Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana.

In the age of AI, misinformation and disinformation, there’s worthy motive to quiz emotionally and politically charged photos. So when “the cigarette girl” appeared on-line this month, a total lot of customers did true that.

It wasn’t straight away sure, to illustrate, whether or no longer she became once lighting fixtures up interior Iran or somewhere with free-speech protections as a tag of solidarity. Some observed a background that perceived to be in Canada. She confirmed that in interviews. However did her collar line up correctly? Was once the flame life like? Would a real lady let her hair fetch so end to the fire?

Many puzzled: Is the “cigarette girl” an instance of “psyops?” That, too, is unclear. That’s a characteristic of conflict and statecraft as veteran as human conflict, in which an report or sound is intentionally disseminated by someone with a stake in the consequence. From the allies’ untrue radio announces for the length of World Battle II to the Cool Battle’s nuclear missile parades, historical past is rich with examples.

The U.S. Navy doesn’t even veil it. The 4th Psychological Operations Neighborhood out of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina last year launched a recruitment video known as, “Ghost in the Machine 2 that’s peppered with references to “PSYWAR.” And the Gaza battle featured a ferocious conflict of optics: Hamas compelled Israeli hostages to publicly smile and pose ahead of being launched, and Israel broadcast their ecstatic reunions with family and chums.

Regardless of the retort, the symbolism of the Iranian lady’s act became once extremely effective sufficient to rocket across the world on social media — and aid of us at real-lifestyles protests to replica it.

The girl at the attend of the imagery

The girl didn’t retort to more than one efforts by The Associated Press to substantiate her identity. However she has spoken to other shops, and AP confirmed the authenticity of those interviews.

On X, she calls herself a “radical feminist” and makes squawk of the display screen screen title Morticia Addams —- after the exuberantly creepy matriarch of “The Addams Family” — sheerly out of her hobby in “spooky issues,” the lady acknowledged in an interview with the nonprofit outlet The Goal.

She doesn’t permit her real title to be printed for safety reasons after what she describes as a harrowing plod from being a dissident in Iran — where she says she became once arrested and abused — to safety in Turkey. There, she informed The Goal, she got a pupil visa for Canada. Now, in her mid-20s, she acknowledged she has refugee residing in and lives in Toronto.

It became once there, on Jan. 7, that she filmed what’s change into identified as “the cigarette girl” video a day ahead of the Iranian regime imposed a end to-total web blackout.

“I true desired to converse my chums that my heart, my soul became once with them,” she acknowledged in an interview on CNN-News18, a network affiliate in India.

In the interviews, the lady acknowledged she became once arrested for the first time at 17 for the length of the “bloody November” protests of 2019, demonstrations that erupted after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal that Iran had struck with world powers that imposed crushing sanctions.

“I became once strongly in opposition to the Islamic regime,” she informed The Goal. Security forces “arrested me with tasers and batons. I spent an night in a penal complicated without my family bright where I became once or what had happened to me.” Her family sooner or later secured her unlock by offering a pay dash for bail. “I became once below surveillance from that moment on.”

In 2022 for the length of the protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, she acknowledged she participated in a YouTube program opposing the primary hijab and began receiving calls from blocked numbers threatening her. In 2024, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter break, she shared her fable about it — and became once arrested in her home in Isfahan.

The girl acknowledged she became once wondered and “subjected to extreme humiliation and physical abuse.” Then without explanation, she became once launched on a high bail. She fled to Turkey and began her plod to Canada and, sooner or later, global notoriety.

“All my family members are composed in Iran, and I haven’t heard from them in about a days,” she acknowledged in the interview, printed Tuesday. “I’m no doubt frightened that the Islamic regime would possibly maybe per chance additionally attack them.”