Scenes of protesters burning images of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may appear, in their simplicity, as merely symbolic acts. Yet they carry a deep psychological weight for both supporters and opponents of the regime. This impact is magnified when the act is carried out by a woman challenging the apex of a patriarchal religious authority. This was evident in a series of images showing female protesters lighting cigarettes from burning portraits of Khamenei. This provocation has prompted the regime to respond with even harsher repression, including executions, in revenge for an affront to the image of the “Supreme Leader.”
The act of burning Khamenei’s image reflects the depth of the desire to break fear and to dare confront a leader who has sought to impose his “sanctity” through terror. Burning his portrait undermines its function as a tool of domination over minds and an attempt to subjugate them, a function the theocratic system in Iran is keen to enforce. The burning of the image is a rejection of its imposition as an identity marker for an entire people, and of its omnipresence in public spaces as a deed of ownership over the lives of the governed and the bodies of women. Most importantly, when the image is burned from within Iran itself, it encourages others to dare the same act. The symbolic toppling of the leader thus becomes a first step toward his actual downfall.
As protests in Iran intensified, burning Khamenei’s image and women lighting cigarettes with its flames turned into a social media trend after a photograph of a young woman doing so went viral, inspiring others to replicate the act. The symbolic burning of the Supreme Leader’s image, Ali Khamenei, who holds sway over the fate of women in Iran, carries clear connotations and moral impact on the course of events. Even if the woman in the widely circulated photo did not perform her act inside Iran, protesters within the country have indeed set fire to images of Khamenei and other figures in various regions, as shown in videos that managed to bypass the media blackout. This points to the widening scope of defiance against the regime and an assault on the aura of the “symbolic leader,” promoted as untouchable. Burning his image sends a clear and unambiguous message, understood by supporters and opponents alike, announcing the breaking of a long-standing taboo.
In Iran, where the regime violently controls women’s destinies, and where symbolic rebellion against repression has cost many women their lives, any Iranian woman daring to confront the image of the Supreme Leader carries particular significance. Ali Khamenei stands at the head of an ideological system of governance that directly controls women’s bodies and personal freedoms, defines their roles in society, and seeks to complete its domination over what they have struggled to preserve of lives deemed forbidden by Khomeinist doctrine. Women resist being enveloped in the black garments meant to erase them.
Women’s revolt against the image of the Supreme Leader has a powerful visual impact because it challenges the patriarchal religious authority embodied by Khamenei, an authority armed with vast tools of violence that places women in a position of moral and social inferiority and justifies guardianship over them in the name of sharia and “protecting society.” The “jurist” views women’s attainment of even their most basic rights as a threat to society, imposing dress codes and other restrictions under threat of pursuit, humiliation, and even death, as in the case of Mahsa Amini, whose killing by the morality police sparked the previous wave of protests in 2022.
As the system of the Supreme Jurist seeks to break women and crush their resolve, a powerful meaning emerges in the act of Iranian women—those rising up inside the darkened country and those who have fled abroad—shattering the sanctity that Khamenei tries to impose upon himself as the representative of the awaited Mahdi, divinely appointed and endowed with ultimate authority. It is an attempt to bring the man down from his illusory throne to reality, where he is merely a ruler presiding over a country whose people suffer repression, poverty, and oppression.
In confronting a system that seeks to place women beneath men, a woman burning the Supreme Leader’s image to light a cigarette becomes a challenge to the most powerful man and highest authority, an act of mockery and inversion of hierarchy through which she asserts ownership over her own body.
From an Instrument of Glorification to a Tool of Retribution
From the heart of the protests ongoing since December 28, images and videos have also circulated showing angry demonstrators burning portraits of Khamenei and other figures. While these scenes may not carry all the symbolism and layers present in images of women, they nonetheless convey a language of defiance and the shattering of the regime’s claims to divine legitimacy.
In general, the destruction of statues and images displayed everywhere represents an attempt to break the control imposed by visual dominance in streets and squares, whose function is to constantly remind citizens of the ruler’s authority and to present him as an eternal leader, discouraging even the thought of replacement and turning him into the axis around which life itself must be sacrificed.
Thus, the image becomes the one thing that can be reached of a ruler hidden behind his fortifications. It shifts from an instrument of glorification to one of punishment and humiliation. This form of protest may not topple the tyrant from his throne, but it does remove him from the hearts of the people and strikes at a core nerve of a system built on the sanctification of leaders and the fabrication of an aura around them. Its value lies not only in the support it garners, but also in the anger it provokes among regime loyalists and their sense that the symbol itself has truly been violated.
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