Videos show Iran protesters chanting against Khamenei and toppling Soleimani statue
Event date: January 8, 2026. Israel National News reported that protesters in Ilam, western Iran, were seen chanting "Death to Khamenei" in videos sent to Iran International, while other footage on social media showed a statue of Qasem Soleimani being toppled in Fars Province. The report also said a separate Soleimani statue was burned in Lali, in southwestern Iran.
The value of the report lies in its specificity and its limits. The source does not claim to verify the protests independently on the ground. Instead, it points to video evidence circulating through Iran International and social media. That makes attribution essential. The article should describe what the footage shows without pretending it has a full independent audit of the demonstrations.
Soleimani's symbolic importance explains why the statue scenes matter. He was the former commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq on January 3, 2020. That anniversary context gives the protest images more weight: they were not random acts of vandalism, but public gestures aimed at a figure central to the regime's self-image.
The chants against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are also politically charged because they target the country's highest authority directly. The source says the slogans were heard in Ilam and that other demonstrations referenced the same anger through the destruction of a Soleimani statue. In authoritarian politics, slogans and monuments can be as meaningful as marches because they show how dissent is being expressed and how far it is willing to go.
The report also mentions that earlier in the week protesters in Tehran referenced a social-media post by Elon Musk condemning the Iranian regime, and that a sign reading "President Trump Street" appeared in central Tehran. Those details add texture, but the article does not need them to establish the basic news value of the protest footage. The essential point is the public display of defiance against the Supreme Leader and a regime icon.
Because the source is a brief report drawn from videos and social posts, the safest article is narrow. It does not say how many people were protesting, whether they were organized or spontaneous, or how officials responded. What it does say is enough: images from Ilam and other cities showed anti-Khamenei chants and the toppling or burning of Soleimani statues.
That is significant because it shows dissent taking a symbolic form that authorities cannot easily ignore. When protesters attack a statue or chant directly against the Supreme Leader, they are not merely voicing frustration. They are challenging the legitimacy of the political order itself. The packet supports that interpretation, but only as an inference from the footage and the slogans, not as an official measurement of the movement.
