Fact Check: Iranian Leader Khamenei is not dead. Chinese account spreading Fake news

A Video is doing rounds of social media sites with the claim that Iranian are celebrating the death of Khamenei.  Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei is the second and current supreme leader of Iran, in office since 1989.

Meanwhile, Twitter account @yunqi11111111 shared a video with a Chinese caption that can is nearly translated into English, “Iran’s whole country celebrates Khamenei is dead!”

Similarly, many accounts posted this video with the same claim.

Fact Check

The DFRAC team found no official news of the death of Khaemenei. However, we found an article on an Irani website, en.post.org, with the title, “Ali Khamenei is dead, rumors not funny anymore for 75% of voters.”

Further, it was mentioned in this article that, “Ali Khamenei (Iranian Supreme Leader), 83, recently became the latest internet celebrity death hoax, victim.”

Then, we also found a tweet from BBC correspondent, Nafiseh Kohnavard also shared a picture of Khamenei that “Islamic Republic’s supreme leader finally showed up at a military ceremony as anti-regime protests across Iran over the killing of #MahsaAmini enter third week. As expected he blamed the US for the massive uprising. There were rumours about Khamenei’s death in the past few weeks.”

Further on reverse image search of different frames of the video we found a video on the Youtube channel of OpinionGuru TV with the title, “Mahsa Amini Justice Protest. In Richmond Hill, Ontario Canada. 1 Oct 2022”

Comparing both videos, we found that the viral video is of Richmond Hill, Ontario Canada where thousands of people were protesting for justice for Iranian girl, Mahsa Amini who died in Iranian Police custody.

Conclusion

Hence, from this fact check it is clear that as of now the news of Khamenei’s death is merely a rumour. And, the viral video is not of people Iranian people celebrating Khamenei’s death but of protest for Mahsa Amini.