Fact Check: Viral ‘All Eyes On Iran’ Flashlight Protest Video Is AI-Generated, Not Real Footage

New Delhi (Vishvas News). Amidst the ongoing protests against the government in Iran, a video is going viral on social media with the claim that it is an anti-government rally in Iran, in which several people staged a protest by lighting their mobile phone flashlights.

Vishvas News investigated and found this claim to be fake. The viral video is AI-created and is being shared with the campaign tag ‘All Eyes on Iran.’

What is viral?

Sharing the viral video, social media user Samrat Express (Archive) wrote, “On the night of January 10, 2026, the situation became tense in Iran’s capital, Tehran. To hide the voices of the protesters from the world, the government turned off the streetlights, but the public defied the darkness by turning on the flashlights of their mobile phones. This AI-generated video captures the struggle, courage, and unity that occurred that night, when people refused to bow to oppression. Women, Life, Freedom’ became the slogan echoing through the streets of Tehran.”

This video has been shared on various social media platforms with similar and identical claims.

Investigation

In the viral video, several people can be seen protesting by using mobile phone flashlights..

There is no such video available from anti-government protests in Iran. Furthermore, the ‘All Eyes on Iran’ campaign tag raises suspicion that it is AI-created. To find the source of the video, we conducted a reverse image search using relevant keyframes. This led us to the video posted on the profile of a verified Instagram user named elnaz555.

Sharing it as a gesture of solidarity with Iran’s current anti-government protests, he explained that it was created using AI. He wrote, “Recently, a video surfaced showing a large crowd on the dark streets of Tehran, turning on their cellphone lights after the government turned off the streetlights to hide their numbers. That moment inspired me to recreate that scene through art using AI.”

Our investigation clearly shows that this video is not real.

For further confirmation, we tested it with an AI detection tool. The video has two clips, so we checked them separately.

We checked this video using the University of Buffalo’s DeepFake-O-Meter, and almost all of its indicators confirmed a high probability of AI manipulation. The AVSRDD (2025) detector confirmed a near 100% probability of AI creation.

The TALL (2023) detector confirmed a near 100% probability of the video being AI-created. Meanwhile, DSP-FWA (2019) and XCLIP (2022) had confidence scores of 61% and 47%, respectively.

TruthScan’s analysis revealed a 100% probability of this video being AI-created.

For further verification, we contacted the Deepfake Analysis Unit (DAU), an initiative of our partner TIA (formerly MCA). They shared with us an analysis from several other detection tools, which confirms the video is AI-created.

IsitAI confirmed that this video is highly likely to be AI-generated, while ImageWhisperer’s analysis also confirms that this video is highly likely to be AI-generated.

Our investigation revealed that the viral video is not real, but AI-created.

According to a Reuters report, more than 500 people have been reported killed so far in anti-government protests in Iran. According to a BBC report, protests were reported in 24 provinces in Iran until January 7, 2026; however, protests are now taking place in more than 80 districts across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces.

Conclusion: The viral video, claiming people are protesting by lighting mobile flashlights amid the ongoing anti-government protests in Iran, is not real but rather AI-generated.

Tags

• Flashlight Protest in Iran
• Flashlight rally
• Iran anti-government protests