A cigarette against the regime. A new protest launched by Iranian women abroad, who film themselves lighting cigarettes from a burning image of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is going viral on social media.
The videos, relaunched by international media such as the Daily Mail and Euronews, represent for women a form of resistance to Iran’s rigid rules: smoking for women is in fact an act strongly disapproved of in the Islamic Republic, while setting fire to images of the Supreme Leader is against the law.
In the various videos, the women are portrayed without the hijab, the mandatory veil in the Islamic country. Among the most viral videos, that of ‘Morticia Addams’, an X user living in Toronto, Canada, whose cigarette protest was relaunched on social media and widely celebrated by users.