In March 2026, after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed when the U.S. and Israeli launched airstrikes, his son Mojtaba Khamenei was named as his successor. Reuters reported Khamenei had not made any public appearances in the days immediately following his rise to leadership, leading to online speculation about his health.
In that context, some X accounts shared a video (archived) purportedly depicting U.S. President Donald Trump showing Fox News host Laura Ingraham a framed image of the "Cardboard Ayatollah" behind some drapes in the Oval Office. The "Cardboard Ayatollah" was a depiction of Khamenei made of cardboard.
(@Breaking911 on X)
That post, as well as others on X, received numerous comments from people wondering whether the video was real.
The video was fake. The original Fox News clip — which showed Trump revealing a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence to Ingraham — was edited with artificial intelligence tools.
The handles of two social media accounts, @GizmoMemes and @BasedRose, had been added to the chyron at the bottom of the footage. Tracing back those handles revealed the source of the altered video was the @GizmoMemes X account.
The post (archived) included, alongside the video, the text: "Donald Trump shows Laura Ingraham the cardboard ayatollah 🤣 Meme w/ @BasedRose." A "Made with AI" label was added to the post by X.
Later, the @BasedRose account reposted (archived) a fact check from Newsweek and thanked Newsweek for "pointing out the obvious."
The original, unedited clip featuring the Declaration of Independence was aired in a March 20, 2025, episode of Laura Ingraham's show on Fox News. During the episode, in which Trump gave Ingraham a tour of the Oval Office, Trump unveiled a framed copy of the document from behind some drapes.
The audio and video in both clips were the same, apart from the "Cardboard Ayatollah" replacing the Declaration.
The "Cardboard Ayatollah" image itself appeared to have come from a video purporting to show Iranian officials displaying a cardboard cutout of Khamenei to Iranians, which in turn appeared to be an AI-produced parody of a video of officials displaying a framed portrait of Iran's new leader. Snopes could not confirm the source or authenticity of the video.
Snopes has previously fact-checked other fake images and video related to the Iran war. For example, we fact-checked a fake image of Iranian missiles inscribed with text about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's victims.