The social media platform X has replaced the Iranian flag emoji on its site, swapping the current Islamic Republic flag for the pre-1979 Shah-era lion-and-sun flag as a wave of intense protests continues in Iran.
The change was sparked after an X user contacted X executive Nikita Bier and asked that the flag icon be changed. Bier responded, "Give me a few hours," according to The New York Post.
Within hours, the Shah-era flag began appearing across the platform, the Post reported, adding that the swap retroactively replaced prior uses of the Iranian flag emoji in usernames and profiles.
That created a brief period in which official Iranian government accounts displayed the lion-and-sun flag next to their names, the Post said.
After the change went viral, Iran’s official accounts removed the flag emoji and replaced it with treplaced it with the Islamic Republic’s stylized ‘Allah’ emblem, the symbol shown in the center of the country’s flag.
The change came as Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, has emerged as a central figure in the current protest movement from exile, helping spur general strikes and mass demonstrations against the Islamic Republic.
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