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A video shared online in January 2026 authentically showed people marching through a city in Iran while holding up their phone lights during protests that started in late December 2025.
Rating:In late December 2025, protests broke out in Iran in response to the country's struggling economy, with nationwide frustration at the Iranian leadership continuing into January 2026. To counter the demonstrations, the government reportedly largely cut off the populace from the outside world with an internet and communications blackout. According to The Associated Press, activists reported that, as of Jan. 13, more than 2,500 people had died since the protests began.
Despite the blackout, some people shared what they claimed to be footage of demonstrations taking place in the Islamic Republic. One particular video purportedly showed protesters marching en masse through a darkened city street, with many holding up the torches on their phones.
Overlaid text on the clip read: "All Eyes on Iran." An Instagram user who shared the recording on Jan. 11 added the caption (archived):
All eyes on Iran
The Government shut down the street lights to hide the massive scale of protesters but everyone used their phone lights to show they are out there
#iran #iranprotests
The video, along with screenshots of the footage, also appeared on Facebook (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and TikTok (archived), alongside the claim that it depicted the Iranian protests that started at the end of 2025.
In short, the clip was not authentic. A social media user created the alleged recording using artificial intelligence tools. Therefore, we have rated the footage as fake.
The video originated from Instagram user @elnaz555 (archived). The account's bio named the person as Elnaz Mansouri and described her as an artist attending Iceland University of the Arts. In a separate post (archived), Mansouri said she started as a landscape photographer who "slowly started to experiment with other media such as 3D art, video, and AI."
Mansouri posted the original clip on Jan. 10 (archived). In the caption, she called it a "digital tribute" to the 2025-26 Iranian demonstrations and acknowledged that the footage was AI-generated:
All Eyes on Iran.
A digital tribute to the current protests happening in Iran.
A video recently surfaced showing mass crowds in the dark streets of Tehran, turning on their cellphone lights after the government shut off street lighting to hide their numbers. That moment inspired me to recreate the scene through art using AI.
This piece is not a replacement for reality! It's a reflection of it, a way to help more people see what's happening especially since the entire country is in a digital blackout for the last 4 days.
You can find the original video by searching "Iran Protests 2026" on IG.
Snopes contacted Mansouri via Instagram direct message, asking for comment and clarification on the AI tool she used to create the video. We will update this story if we receive a reply.
One indication that the footage was AI-generated was people's hands and arms being slightly distorted in the section of the clip that appeared to be filmed at ground level.
Mansouri's Instagram account contained numerous AI-generated clips. On creative networking site Behance, she also noted that her work consisted of AI creations (archived).
For further reading, Snopes verified a post in which U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was ready to intervene in the Iranian protests.
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