In Iran and across the world, demonstrators are lighting cigarettes with burning photos of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It started with an Iranian woman, who identifies as ‘Morticia Adams’. Now known as ‘cigarette girl’, she escaped from the Islamic Republic and has refugee status in Canada
Iran’s nationwide protests, which began on December 28, 2025, seems to be slowing down on Friday under the weight of a brutal crackdown by authorities that has left thousands dead and put tens of thousands in prison.
But even as the demonstrations reduce, images of protesters chanting slogans and calling for a regime change are deeply rooted in our minds. Of these, images of women lighting a cigarette to with a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has become iconic, inspiring many others to do the same.
However, this evocative image that has grabbed the attention of a world captivated by the Iranian uprisings, wasn’t taken in Iran at all. But was taken in Canada and the woman has now been identified as ‘Morticia Addams’ — after the exuberantly creepy matriarch of “The Addams Family”.
The woman behind iconic Iran visual
When
protests broke out in Iran over the poor condition of the economy and then spiralled into an anti-government demonstration, one visual caught the world’s attention.
It showed a woman, wearing a white coat and standing in a snowy setting, setting fire to an A4 picture of Khamenei and using it to re-spark the cigarette already in her mouth. According to a Reuters copy, the video was filmed outside a branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Ontario, Canada, across the street from the Richmond Hill Public Library, which is visible behind.
Watch this viral trend sweep Iran: Brave women lighting cigarettes with burning pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
A cigarette, a flame, a revolution.
Freedom is burning bright! 🇮🇷
pic.twitter.com/l3rJLSAO2f— Raghu (@IndiaTales7) January 10, 2026
On X, the women identifies herself as a “radical feminist” and uses the screen name Morticia Addams because of her interest in “spooky things”, according to an Associated Press report.
She has refused to divulge her identity for safety reasons after what she describes as a harrowing journey from being a dissident in Iran — where she says she was arrested and abused — to safety in Turkey. There, she told The Objective, she obtained a student visa for Canada. Now, in her mid-20s, she said she has refugee status in and lives in Toronto.
According to the AP report, it was on January 7, that she filmed what’s become known as “the cigarette girl” video a day before the Iranian regime imposed a near-total internet blackout. “I just wanted to tell my friends that my heart, my soul was with them,” she said in an interview on CNN-News18.
In the interviews, the woman said she was arrested for the first time at 17 during the “bloody November” protests of 2019, demonstrations that erupted after Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal that Iran had struck with world powers that imposed crushing sanctions. “I was strongly opposed to the Islamic regime,” she told The Objective. Security forces “arrested me with tasers and batons. I spent a night in a detention centre without my family knowing where I was or what had happened to me.” Her family eventually secured her release by offering a pay slip for bail. “I was under surveillance from that moment on.”
In 2022 during the protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, she said she participated in a YouTube programme opposing the mandatory hijab and began receiving calls from blocked numbers threatening her. In 2024, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash, she shared her story about it — and was arrested in her home in Isfahan.
The woman said she was questioned and “subjected to severe humiliation and physical abuse.” Then without explanation, she was released on a high bail. She fled to Turkey and began her journey to Canada and, eventually, global notoriety.
“All my family members are still in Iran, and I haven’t heard from them in a few days,” she said. “I’m truly worried that the Islamic regime might attack them.”
The image that sparked a trend
The video of Addams lighting Khamenei’s photo on fire has gone viral since she posted it — the video has garnered 1.3 million views. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em. #Iran,” posted Republican US Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana.
It has also
inspired people across the world. Opponents of the regime lighting cigarettes on photos of the Ayatollah from Israel to Germany and Switzerland to the United States.
It has even inspired stylised artwork as well as AI knockoffs. One of the images of Morticia even replicates the style of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster of 2008, with the colours of the Iranian flag washing over the image.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 11, 2026
Even Harry Potter author JK Rowling took note of the image, sharing it on social media and writing: “If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran, you’ve revealed yourself. You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised so long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies.”
With inputs from Associated Press
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