In a bold digital move amid the nationwide protest against the Islamic regime in Iran, social media platform 𝕏 (formerly Twitter) has replaced the official Iranian flag emoji with the historic Lion and Sun emblem, a symbol associated with the country’s pre-1979 monarchy era. Now, when users insert the Iranian flag emoji in their messages on the platform, it displays the Lion and Sun flag, not the current Iranian official flag .

The change, which went live on the web version of the platform late Friday, shows that Elon Musk’s platform officially supports the protesters. The update comes as Iran grapples with its most intense wave of protests against the regime in years, triggered by economic collapse, soaring inflation, and currency devaluation, which have evolved into direct calls for the overthrow of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Finally!
The true flag of Iran.
Thanks @X pic.twitter.com/ljUerbvABy

— Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh (@Ehsan_Ebr) January 9, 2026

Demonstrations, which began in late December 2025, have spread to over 100 cities, involving strikes, clashes with security forces, and symbolic acts of defiance such as burning regime icons. Chants invoking the return of the Shah or exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi have echoed through the streets, and demonstrators are using the pre-1979 flag of the nation in many places.

X’s product lead, Nikita Bier, confirmed the alteration after a user requested her to change the flag emoji on X. Yesterday, a user posted, “Update the ɪʀ emoji”, tagging Elon Musk and Nikita Bier. The product head responded with “Give me a few hours.” After some time, she posted a link to a GitHub repository for emojis shown by X, which shows that the image for Iran’s flag has been changed, adding “Should be live sometime tomorrow on web.”

In progress: https://t.co/nf3txQA1VT

Should be live sometime tomorrow on web.

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) January 9, 2026

Accordingly, the new emoji was visible on the platform today.  

The new emoji retroactively affects all uses of the emoji using the flag’s code , including those on official Iranian government and state media accounts like Tasnim News and even Khamenei’s profile. This has prompted many official Iranian government X accounts to remove the flag entirely from their bios to avoid displaying the opposition symbol.

While the change is visible on X’s web interface, mobile devices may still show the standard Islamic Republic flag due to operating system overrides. However, a cross-platform broader rollout is anticipated.

The Lion and Sun motif is tooted in ancient Persian heraldry and was used on Iranian flags for centuries until its removal after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The flag has now become the symbol of anti-regime protestors nd monarchist groups.

How emojis work and how 𝕏 changed the flag emoji

Emojis are standardised Unicode characters that represent pictorial symbols, ensuring consistent encoding across digital systems, but their visual appearance and functionality can vary significantly depending on the app, browser, or platform due to differences in font rendering, software support, and design choices. On operating systems like iOS and macOS, Apple’s proprietary emoji font (Apple Color Emoji) displays vibrant, detailed icons, while Android relies on Google’s Noto Colour Emoji for a more stylised look, and Windows uses Segoe UI Emoji with its own aesthetic. This means the same emoji codepoint, such as U+1F600 for the grinning face , might appear different on different platforms.

Web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari typically use the underlying OS’s emoji font for rendering, but they can fall back to generic symbols or even display nothing if there is no image available on the device to show a particular emoji, especially on older systems. Websites override this problem by using embedded web fonts instead of the local system font. In apps, developers often integrate platform-specific handling via libraries to display relevant pictures for the emojis.

X (formerly Twitter) displays emojis primarily through its proprietary open-source library called Twemoji, which ensures consistent rendering across its web and mobile platforms by converting Unicode emoji codes into scalable vector graphics (SVGs) or images. X overrides the device’s native font, where necessary, for uniformity and to avoid compatibility issues like missing characters on older systems.

On the web version, Twemoji parses the text code for the emojis and shows custom images hosted on X’s servers, allowing for platform-specific customisations without altering the underlying Unicode standards. In its apps, particularly on Android, X has adopted Twemoji to standardise appearances across versions, replacing vendor-specific designs (e.g., from Google or Samsung) to provide a unified experience.

To change the Iranian flag emoji, X updated its Twemoji repository on GitHub to replace the existing design, featuring the Islamic Republic’s red tulip emblem, with the historical Lion and Sun symbol from the pre-1979 monarchy era. This update was immediately deployed to the web platform and then gradually appeared on mobile devices.