Claim: A video shows an Iranian woman in Tehran removing her hijab in public to reveal a T-shirt with an explicit message against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, framed as a direct act of protest inside Iran.
Fact: The video was filmed in Paris, France, not Iran. It shows a protest action during a solidarity rally, and has been falsely location-tagged as “Tehran” on social media.
Screenshot from a video shared on Instagram claiming to show an Iranian woman publicly removing her hijab in Tehran as an act of protest. Soch Fact Check found that visual and location cues in the footage do not support the claim that the video was filmed in Iran.
A video circulating widely on Instagram claims to show an Iranian woman publicly removing her hijab and burqa in Tehran amid the recent protests in Iran. The clip, shared with captions describing the act as a direct challenge to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, frames it as a rare moment of public protest in Tehran against the Iranian state.
However, an analysis of the video’s visual details and location cues, suggests that the footage of the protest is not from Iran.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reviewed news coverage and official reporting related to the purported incident shown in the video but found no credible reports of a woman publicly removing her hijab or burqa in Tehran during on-going protests in Iran..
We then suspected if the video was from Tehran at all as the visual details, including the surrounding architecture, crowd behaviour, and lack of visible law-enforcement presence were inconsistent with public protest scenarios in Iran.
A reverse-search of keyframes from the viral clip led us to earlier uploads of the same footage linked to a public demonstration in Paris, France, held in solidarity with Iranian protesters. The same visuals appear in Euronews’ coverage of a march held in Paris on 11 January 2026 in support of Iranian protesters and the exiled Reza Pahlavi. Although the Euronews video does not show the specific moment of the woman removing her head covering, it depicts a similar crowd environment at the same Paris march, including demonstrators waving Iranian flags and Israeli flags, which are also visible in the viral clip.
We also found that the woman in the video is not an Iranian protester, but Camille Eros, a France-based activist who shared the same footage of herself on social media. In the caption of her Instagram post, Eros wrote “Support Iran against islamic tyranny” and used hashtags such as #france and #iran, framing the act as a solidarity gesture rather than a protest against Iranian laws from within Iran. Her Instagram bio and public posts identify her as a French activist, with no indication that she is Iranian. This contradicts the claim’s portrayal of her as an Iranian woman protesting Iran’s mandatory hijab laws from Tehran.
Screenshot from an Instagram post by French activist Camille Eros, who shared the footage as a gesture of solidarity with Iranian protesters in France.
Further examination of the footage showed European architectural features, including Haussmann-style façades and street layout, that are not likely to be found in Tehran. Therefore, Soch Fact Check geolocated the video in the claim, using Google Maps and Street View, which revealed that it is from Place Victor Hugo in Paris, France. A comparison of the background elements visible in the viral clip, such as building façades, rooflines, storefront signage, and road curvature, with publicly available imagery of Place Victor Hugo confirmed it as the location.
An X post indicated the protest gathering point was Place Victor Hugo, the same area Soch Fact Check geolocated by matching the video’s background to Google Street View imagery.. The post promoted a “Grande Marche citoyenne pour l’Iran” on 11 January 2026 and listed Place Victor Hugo, Paris, as the gathering point. While this does not on its own prove the viral clip was filmed during that specific march, the post overlaps with Camille Eros’ Instagram upload in key ways: Eros posted the same footage on 11 January 2026, framed it as support for Iran, and tagged @assohomaa, matching the @AssoHoma account referenced in the X post.
Virality
Multiple Instagram accounts reposted the clip framing it as an act of defiance in Tehran. Some of these posts can be viewed here, here, here and here.
The same clip was also shared widely on Facebook by public pages and users here, here, and here.
On X, the video circulated with near-identical captions claiming it showed a protest in Iran. Posts using this framing can be viewed here, here, and here. Some users on X, however, correctly noted that the footage was from France here.
Conclusion: The claim is false. The video does not show an Iranian woman from the recent protests in Tehran. It actually shows a French activist from a solidarity rally held in Paris, France on 11 January 2026 in support of Iranian protesters.