Activist hackers broke into the evening news on Iran's state TV for 15 seconds, just as footage of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was being broadcast.
The hackers flashed an image of Khamenei surrounded by flames, and with a crosshair superimposed on his face. A caption read "Join us and stand up!" and "The blood of our youth is dripping from your claws," a reference to Khamenei.
A song with the lyrics "Woman. Life. Freedom" — a common chant of the protesters — played in the background.
The now viral clip of the incident shows IRIB/IRINN airing a segment on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attending a meeting in the southern city of Bushehr, which was interrupted with a video of a cartoon mask with a beard and heavy brows against a black backdrop.
The video of the mask was followed by a screen showing a photo of Khamenei with a target superimposed on his face alongside photos of Nika Shahkarami, Hadis Najafi, Mahsa Amini, and Sarina Esmailzadeh – all young women who have died in Iran in the last month.
Amini, 22, died after being detained by morality police. The other three, two of them just teenagers, died in the protest movement that has erupted since Amini’s death.
22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody, following her arrest by the country's so-called morality police for wearing an "improper" hijab—in violation of Iran's mandatory hijab law—while visiting Tehran from Saqqez. According to eyewitnesses, Amini was severely beaten by Guidance Patrol officers—an assertion denied by Iranian authorities.
The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in custody on 16 September, three days after her arrest, and her death triggered massive protests across the country that are still ongoing.
In response to these demonstrations, beginning on 19 September the Iranian government implemented regional shutdowns of Internet access. As protests grew, a widespread Internet blackout was imposed along with nationwide restrictions on social media.
On October 3, in his first statement since the outbreak of the protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the widespread unrest as "riots", and likewise tried to cast it as a foreign plot.
According to Iran Human Rights, as of October 8, at least 185 people have been killed as a result of the government's intervention in the protests, involving tear gas and live rounds, making the protests the deadliest since the 2019–2020 protests that resulted in more than 1,500 fatalities.
