Revert Iran flag to current internationally recognized design (post-1979 official version)#1463
Revert Iran flag to current internationally recognized design (post-1979 official version)#1463mrvafa wants to merge 1 commit into
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…979 official version)
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I don't see these points as relevant. twemoji is supposed to represent what's on Twitter. It's right in the title of the repository: "Twitter Emoji". Twitter doesn't use what is presented here. It uses the flag with the lion. Read: Same goes for other emojis you can see on the commit, which you didn't mention: So, if you for some reason want to go back in time, you need to make a point about this (such as if Twitter switched back), including why you want the water gun emoji instead of a pistol emoji. Going back means fully, not just for just one emoji, but all that were changed. |
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Your English has improved a lot since you opened this pull request. Glad to see Fars News were finally granted access to large language models. |
Ad-hominem attacks on individual people, and pretending like every single person of a given nationality is some kind of government agent is xenophobic. The points are valid, the files replaced are correct. |
Please remind me where the official Palestine 🇵🇸 entry is on the list of UN member states. I cannot seem to find it. |
This is two logical fallacies
For 1: For 2: You're also relying on circular reasoning
You're essentially saying "Well, its fine because its twitter's not the UN's" which is another form "its fine because its fine" which if that were so, there is no questioning of what Twitter could do, which, is logically absurd. |
Many Non UN states have flags. E.g Taiwan: However, where your whataboutism fails is that nobody's replacing Taiwan's flag with China's. Two different claims to the same area, PRC, and ROC have two separate flags. It would be ridiculous to use the Taiwanese flag for China, and vice versa. |
No one is replacing Palestine with Israel. By your logic, Twemoji should also definitely go ahead with #1459. |
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Then why have PRs open at all? This is not an argument. |
I don't know how you would come to that conclusion from my statement. Seems the CIA isn't giving you access to LLMs :p |
This is in fact an argument, and PR #1463 is merely a joke. I'm just curious how far you're willing to go with your little GitHub propaganda. Fake reactions, AI generated pull requests, looks like you're desperate. I applaud you for taking on an easy assignment nonetheless. |
You're the one calling other people "Farsi News", trying to do whataboutism about a completely unrelated topics involving Palestine, unable to understand the arguments of my replies. The only one whom seems desperate is you. Regardless, every other platform uses the correct, internationally recognized flag of Iran. It is only Twitter, which, in a propagandist move, uses the flag of an absolute Monarchy. I am not desperate, because everyone already knows that Twitter is a totalitarian rag. |
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I'm just going to leave a screenshot of this here in case you delete it later. 
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Literally all you have is conspiracy theories, and accusation of state involvement. Its a PR on github man, get a grip and grow up. |
A country’s flag is an official sovereign symbol registered and recognized internationally. When a global platform like X Corp. (formerly Twitter) displays national flags, it makes sense to use the officially recognized version, not unofficial or politically altered variants. |
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For more information: As all people know, these flags refer to the former kingdom. But in 1979, after an election that was observed by United Nations and national inspectors, 99.31% of Iranian people voted YES to change the regime from the former dictatorial kingdom to the Islamic Republic under a new constitution. These days, some people who remained from the former regime, with a lot of money, are trying to return to power using everything they have. One of these things is bots, which you and I know exist and have been used on X many times. As Donald Trump said during previous US elections. So these people try to come back to power using such scenarios. I hope X and the open-source community respect the Iranian official election that happened and use its official signs and flags. here is link of referendum: |
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@albassort @HEffatpanah Here, a very relevant analogy as we are on Github: Let's assume there is some app, and the developer decided to show its code, and now you look there at some resource (image) which isn't to your liking such as a different share-icon, you can't say "Hey similar repositories do something else here, so you must change it!", because the point of the repository is to reflect the real code&resources of the app. That's why on Android, there are various apps that don't do what others do. It's a free market. Each chooses how their apps will look like. Your point is the same as "Hey Google makes the flags wavy, so here they should be wavy too". It's up to Twitter's owner to decide it with their designer, not the repository's mods which should reflect what's on the website/app. So, if you want to change anything related to a specific emoji talk with the company's owner. Not here. You are talking about platforms instead of repositories. If for example another company has a repository of its emojis, the only thing you could complain in the repository is that it's outdated, meaning not in sync with what's on the platform. To actually talk about design choices, you need to talk with the company's owner (which is most definitely not the mod of the repository for such a large company). Not the repository. You complain about whataboutism , but that's all the points you were using: What about other people/companies decided. Their decision isn't the decision of Twitter. The decision here should be only related to Twitter alone. So, your point is like this: other companies chose a water pistol emoji, so why here it's not a water pistol emoji: What could the moderator of this repository do? Can only mark this as "working as intended" or "not a bug", because it reflects what's on Twitter already as it should. Want to download current version of what's on Twitter? This is the place. Want an older version of it or specific older versions of some emojis? You can also do this. |
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Islamic state officials have been real butthurt ever since they lost their offensive flag and premium subscriptions. 🤭 |
The repo being called "Twitter Emoji" is just legacy naming — it's an open-source library now, not a private Twitter-only asset.
I read the Emojipedia pages — X (via Twemoji) updated to the Lion and Sun design in January 2026 (following #1440). But my point is this is not Iran's flag since 1979.
My PR focuses only on reverting the 🇮🇷 flag to the post-1979 official design not any other changes. |
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@mrvafa Again, the official design of Twitter is as shown on the link and on the app itself. Try it. Use Twitter and see for yourself what Twitter shows for the Iranian flag. This is not about the design of other companies or design that the UN has accepted. This repository is about Twitter, and Twitter alone. If you think this repository purpose isn't about Twitter, as you call it "legacy", you should first request to change it to something else, such as "mrvafa emojis" or "UN emojis" or "not Twitter emojis". I don't think it will be accepted though. When people reach this repository, what they want is of Twitter, not of the UN or other companies. The point of "what about what others choose" is irrelevant. Here it's about Twitter. Want what others choose? Switch to their font/app/website. If you like the style of Twitter, you could even go back to an older version of any emoji you like. The request here doesn't make sense as you already have all the options you want. The moderator here did what should be done: Twitter changed emojis, so it got in sync with it. This is true about all emojis. Irrelevant to a specific flag and what other people say. The mods stayed professional. |
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I understand what you’re trying to say. that the repository should reflect what X uses, and that developers should have freedom in how applications are represented. I respect that point. But I don’t think it applies universally in every case. Here we are not dealing with a generic visual asset or stylistic icon. A flag is a symbol tied to an existing country and its identity. Because of that, it carries legal, cultural, and social weight beyond ordinary design choices. When such symbols are represented, their impact goes beyond technical mirroring. This is also about the emotional and cultural response of people connected to that identity. I came here to express that perspective. Many people feel deeply hurt by seeing their symbol replaced with what they consider an inaccurate or illegitimate version. This isn’t about the UN or other companies. it’s about millions of people feeling that their identity is not treated with respect. From a repository-scope perspective, I understand the goal of mirroring the platform. However, repositories are still curated artifacts. they accept or reject changes, and that implies some responsibility to consider context and impact. That’s why I raised the point here: not to dictate design, but to question whether strict mirroring should override broader considerations in cases involving national symbols. We’re not trying to turn this into a political argument (even though X is inherently a political platform). The point is about respectful representation. X is a global social network, not a private toy application, and its representations affect public perception. So I’m asking for fairness and thoughtful consideration of people’s sentiments in this context. Best Regards. |
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I'm just surprised that you remembered to remove the em dashes this time. Neat! |
We're not asking Twemoji to copy other companies—we're asking it to use Iran's current official flag (post-1979, per UN/Unicode standards). The Lion and Sun design added in Jan 2026 (#1440) is a historic symbol, but obsolete as the national flag since the revolution. Updating to the accurate one fixes an intentional outlier.
It's completely fair to address one specific issue: the repo now uses a pre-1979 design that's no longer Iran's recognized flag. The PR title and description make that clear—I'm not touching unrelated changes like pistol → water gun. Fixing this single inaccuracy isn't unfair; it's precise.
As you said, this is about the open-source repo, not the X platform itself. Twemoji is MIT-licensed for everyone and evolves independently (e.g., other emoji updates stayed). Updating 🇮🇷 here to the standard design benefits downstream projects worldwide. If X wants Lion and Sun on their site, they can override it—no conflict. |
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And... the em dashes are back. |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB The Twemoji repo is intended to be an open-source emoji library for everyone (as stated in its README and licensed under the MIT and CC-BY terms), not an immutable copy of X's state, especially when X has intentionally overridden the standard post-1979 🇮🇷 flag design used by Unicode and all other vendors since January 2026 (#1440), and my PR is simply attempting to correct this within this widely-used library without impacting X's own overrides. |
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@FaridZelli |
How do you guys operate? Do you just have a bunch of browser windows open to leave fake reactions or is this more of a 3 dudes in a circlejerk type scenario? |
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@mrvafa If you "fully respect that technical goal" , talk about this repository only in a technical way, not related to what other companies and organizations say: Talk only about Twitter. If your concern is about design not being similar enough to "official" that you and some others see it, it's out of the scope of this repository which is about letting people get the emojis of Twitter. It's about Twitter itself. The decision was already made by Twitter, and it was just a month ago. The PR here should only be related to Twitter alone. That's why the commit existed, as you can see it updated the pistol emoji to reflect what's on Twitter, too. Look carefully at the links I've provided, showing that as Twitter itself (not the repository) changed, the repository reflected it: https://emojipedia.org/flag-iran#designs:~:text=2015%2D2026)-,Used%20on%20Twitter,-/%20X%20for%20PC And the pistol changed as well: Same goes for other emojis you can see on the commit, which you didn't mention: If this repository is owned by Twitter, and Twitter app/website use it and change after the repository itself changes, it's up to Twitter to change it, not the mods. According to articles, the change came not because of Github activity but because:
The order was: Someone wrote on Twitter itself, then it reached Github and Twitter itself. 
So, for every person who is honest about wanting to change the flag emoji and care so much about design to look like others, he should:
BTW, the same happens in Google's repository: To me, the only thing I wish is that this repository would also offer a nice set of files that people can use like TTF files, as Google does here: |
Well said 💯 |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB It’s worth noting that independent analyses of engagement on platforms like X/Twitter have found a high proportion of accounts following major political figures that are likely bots, spam, inactive, or otherwise inauthentic . for example, one analysis estimated that about 61% of Donald Trump’s followers fit those categories. This highlights the broader issue of non-human engagement affecting perceived metrics on social platforms. If you genuinely believe these are valid technical signals, then we simply have different criteria for what constitutes credible evidence. On the other hand, suggesting that a single user asking for a symbolic change from the head of X should be accepted without scrutiny is not a reasonable technical argument. Also, I would expect a higher standard of integrity and objectivity from someone engaging in technical discussion. It would be unrealistic of me to expect someone to uphold that if they come from a context where human rights and fairness are regularly violated. Or maybe you are designer of bots :) |
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@mohsenaahmadi Changing the topic to talk about me instead of providing a counter claim to the facts I've provided, is what's called "Ad hominem", and this is what you actually say that I am: not working in a professional way, to be unbiased. I've provided only technical details. Not talking about UN and other companies. I've provided a link proving my point, too, that the order of things that happened are:
Here the link again: Not the opposite. Read it and then tell me what's wrong in what I wrote. Stay on topic: Twitter emojis alone. So, this means the Github repository is a mirror to what's on Twitter, and not the opposite, making it illogical to talk here about "Others did it so it should be changed". Look at the order of things. If you want to change things back, do the same as the person who wrote there. As for me, I'm not the topic here, but I don't even use Twitter much at all. I don't like its UI like I don't like of Facebook. I reached here only to get the emojis of Twitter, which I prefer over what's on Google, meaning my reason is smaller files sizes (from here) compared to what Google offers and my personal preference of style : rounded corners flags instead of wavy flags. I also wanted the most up-to-date emojis, but sadly I can't find here the TTF file. I requested in other places help about it as I'm not an expert at all about fonts files creation, and I'm on Windows OS. If a person claims to be unbiased when he talks about a recent single emoji change, he should talk also about all other emojis too. To not discriminate all the other emojis that "don't look like of other platforms". Such a person can start with the pistol emoji which clearly doesn't look like a water gun/pistol on Twitter, and looks more like a real pistol: If a person talks only about one recent emoji and ignore all others that were so far different on Twitter compared to other places, that's very biased. Be fair and honest to your cause of "look the same as on other places". A better way would be to make it general for all emojis , instead of talking about the UN which is irrelevant for emojis. The title would be "Make all emojis look like on other platforms", with all the examples that they look too different. |
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@mohsenaahmadi Thank you for showing you have no counter claim to my proof of how things happened. This usually happens when people use the last attempt, of "Ad hominem". If you are truly into technical details, a developer who reached this repository for emojis of Twitter as me and many others, you already have all the tools you need to do anything you wish with the content. All is open sourced, all has history. There are ways to replace specific emojis if you really want to do it, either by replacing the content or using code for it. I wish there was a more up-to-date TTF file. If anyone here knows of one, or how to create one easily using the current repository (which is more future-proof), please let me know. If you insist on my technical opinion about the flag of Iran to Iranian people, which is irrelevant here and shouldn't matter much: |
Don't forget the coins 👀 |
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Some people like their country
…On Sat, Feb 14, 2026, 9:29 PM Farid Zellipour ***@***.***> wrote:
*FaridZelli* left a comment (twitter/twemoji#1463)
<#1463 (comment)>
Literally all you have is conspiracy theories, and accusation of state
involvement.
Yes, I am a conspiracy theorist. And as we all know, the average
easy-going everyday Iranian open-source developer loves to post quotes from
Ruhollah Khomeini on their Telegram profile. I'm sure @mrvafa
<https://github.com/mrvafa> is a chill dude.
MohammadReza.Vafazadeh.Telegram.png (view on web)
<https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/30ea4362-b470-41dc-b37b-a45093d7aa33> ***@***.***_.X.png
(view on web)
<https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8eaf71f3-ab37-4c80-b6b0-4abefc5e39f2>
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please accept the pull request |
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Hundreds of thousands join Iran protests around the world: |
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Protests in countries does not mean change the flag. There has been
millions of protests using the Palestinian flag, and other non recognized
symbols. Protests in Munich does not mean to change the flag of Iran to
another flag what kind of logic is that?
…On Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 1:57 PM Farid Zellipour ***@***.***> wrote:
*FaridZelli* left a comment (twitter/twemoji#1463)
<#1463 (comment)>
An estimated 350,000 people rally in Toronto in support of Iran protests,
police say <https://youtu.be/ljLWt1ZNsnw>
[image: Watch the video] <https://youtu.be/ljLWt1ZNsnw>
250,000 rally against Iran's regime as world leaders gather at Munich
Security Conference | DW News <https://youtu.be/EMUt_cJalqI>
[image: Watch the video] <https://youtu.be/EMUt_cJalqI>
Crowd gathers for massive protest over Iran regime in downtown LA
<https://youtu.be/20T6XrrLdiA>
[image: Watch the video] <https://youtu.be/20T6XrrLdiA>
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@albassort The change of the flag was, as I wrote above, because someone contacted Twitter to change it, then it reached Github and quickly to Twitter website&app. Not because of Github. He just shows here the reason that this flag became popular. He didn't claim that the protests are those that made the change of the flag. Nobody there protest for Twitter to change the Iranian flag, or even change the Iranian flag in general. That would be weird. |
Thanks for clarifying, I get your point now. I'll continue this discussion on X as well.
The flag with the Lion and Sun emblem is not a new flag; it goes back to the Safavid period (1501-1736). The Safavids used the emblem to symbolize Imam Ali, the first Imam of the Shia branch of Islam. From that time until 1979, the flag with the emblem of the Lion and Sun appeared on the Iranian flag with some changes, such as the addition of a sword. If you are seeing the protests outside Iran, it should be noted that on the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (February 11th), the flag after 1979 is being flown.
This topic is moving away from the original purpose, so it would be appreciated if you did not express your own opinions based on biased media. |
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@mrvafa What's biased in what I wrote? You really think the protest is to change the flag and not about the regime itself? You will find practically nobody there that would claim this. |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB No one serious says the protest is "about changing the flag." That PR doesn’t address anything we said. It’s off-topic, and it feels like bias to keep redirecting away from the regime critique. |
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@mrvafa Indeed, the PR is irrelevant to anything. It has nothing to do with the repository and/or Twitter. The repository reflects what's on Twitter, and it has done as such so far. |
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Never trust diaspora guys only people in the country, maybe they should go back to Iran and help the Israelis with their coup attempt they wish so much!? 😂 It's been WEEKS of this. |
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🇮🇷 Emojis outside of X still shows regular flag, weeks into unsuccessful coup attempt about the same time these diaspora guys learned about world politics 👍 |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB I believe this PR should be merged because it restores consistency and aligns Twemoji with the officially recognized national flag rather than introducing a subjective or political choice. The current internationally recognized flag of Iran remains the post-1979 tricolor with the red emblem, and it continues to be used in diplomatic and official contexts. The Lion and Sun design is a historic flag used prior to 1979 and is not the current state flag. ([Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News] Twemoji generally follows officially recognized national flags for countries, so using a different variant for Iran creates inconsistency across the emoji set. This PR restores parity with other platforms and avoids fragmentation. If there is interest in supporting the Lion and Sun flag, that should be proposed as a new, separate emoji asset rather than replacing the existing Iran country flag. Replacing the country flag introduces ambiguity, while adding a separate historical/alternative flag would:
This PR is minimal, improves consistency, and keeps Twemoji aligned with standards. https://blog.emojipedia.org/x-expected-to-update-its-iranian-flag-emoji-design"X Updates Its Iranian Flag Emoji Design" |
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@mohd-taheri I already explained above why it doesn't make sense to change it and doesn't make sense to talk about it here, so here is about your points:
In addition to all of these, as this repository is for developers, and it's on Github, you are free to use it in a different way: fetch the old version of any emoji you don't like and replace it on your own fork (local or remote). It's your choice if you aren't happy with it. There are solutions. So, if you are truly a developer, the solution is easy. If you are not, it shows here the result, of complaining about "others did it" and claiming it's not political just because of this, while mentioning topics that aren't related to emojis and Twitter. |
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For Your Information (@mohd-taheri , @satellites ) and of all People, this guy (@AndroidDeveloperLB) is an Israel guy that in these days it's clearly that they are criminal murders of Iranian People. for check this you can see her/his Stackoverflow Profile. |
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@mohsenaahmadi As mentioned, writing here political claims doesn't make sense, and trying to offend on personal level is even worse. That's what some people reach when they have no points left in a conversation and thus lose it. It's called : Ad hominem. I've contributed a lot to the open source community over many years, and I write here just like always: in a technical level. And indeed you can check my StackOverlow to see about it, and see for yourself if I'm talking in a professional way or talk about politics there on a purely technical website: That's the darkness in human minds. Only if you insist that I write what I think in personally, I wrote, such as here about making the flag more simplified: So, again, if you insist about talking about myself, even though as I wrote it's not related and I could be born on the moon for that matter: While I was born in Israel, my ancestors from my father's side are actually from Iran (my father was born there) and from my mother it's from Tripoli. The darkness that came to Iran is the reason that my family left it and threatened non-military victims. So, show some respect to people. Be the light you claim that you have. |
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Any update on this issue? Some people report seeing the original flag but many others claim otherwise. what's the next step to merge this change? |
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@arsaey An "issue" of inconsistency between platforms isn't new and can be handled by developers already if they are required to do so quite easily: Every developer should know it's possible to fork repositories and have any changes they wish there, and check older versions too. Github has many open sourced repositories and such a thing is very well known how to handle it if it's really required by the boss of your company. A much older "issue" of inconsistency between various platforms of an emoji is the pistol, which looks more like a water pistol for all the other platforms, yet on x/Twitter it looks like an actual pistol for many years, so if you don't like it on your apps/websites, use the older one in your forked repository : So, for the pistol you can use the design of 2018/04 , and for Iran you can use the design of 2017/12 : A repository of what a website uses isn't an issue though, because the purpose is to reflect what's on the website. |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB , you are doing your best to block this PR. 🔫 is a stylistic variation Using a pre‑1979 flag isn’t just “another version”, it represents a different historical entity, not the current state. |
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@mohd-taheri The Iranian flag is also a stylistic variation. Each platform shows it differently, even when the content is different. Some makes it wavy for example. Again, if you don't like the design, as a developer you should know you have a solution already. It shouldn't be an issue for you. So be professional and look from a developer POV: This is Github. Here in the "issues" part, you talk about bugs and requests. Read: Meaning it's for bugs and requests. Let's examine both cases: This isn't a bug or an issue, as it's really having what's on the platform of X/Twitter, which is the purpose of the repository. Compare the various emojis on the repository to those on the platform. If there is inconsistency between them, that's a bug. And if it's a request, it's the wrong place to do it, because in this specific repository, the request for a change is to X/Twitter itself, as I've shown above. So if a person wants a change, it should be there. |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB I think this still conflates styling differences with semantic differences. Wavy vs flat → stylistic |
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@mohd-taheri Again, you are mixing your feelings/ideology/opinion with what's technical here. There he talks about inconsistency too, of having the app with the wrong flag emoji as it's not the same as on other places of Twitter/X. There, just like here, the correct place to talk about it is different: it's to the developers of the app. So, just like there, if you want to change any emoji, whether it's of Iranian flag or of a pizza emoji, that's not the correct place to write about it. You wrote about history. Here in technical websites, the relevant history isn't from many years ago, but from the newest one. Meaning you should always look at the newest changes, not from many years ago. This repository isn't about the development of the app/website. It's to reflect what's used there. |
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@AndroidDeveloperLB I think parts of your response are not framed objectively and come across as influenced by a specific point of view rather than a neutral technical evaluation. Given that, it feels like the discussion is no longer focused on the technical aspects of the PR, which makes it difficult to move forward productively. At this point, it might be more constructive to have another maintainer or reviewer take a look so the decision can be evaluated from a more neutral perspective. |
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@wolf-th Which part isn't objective in what I wrote? Be professional. Contact the proper people. Here it's a technical website, talking about bugs related to x/Twitter repository of emojis, that are used to reflect what's there. Not a political/social website talking about feelings of what should be used. Just as you shouldn't put here posts about inconsistencies of emojis between various platforms for the pistol being of a real pistol instead of a water pistol like on the others, it shouldn't be of any other emoji. So: Be professional and know who to talk with, and in which website. |
11 participants
This pull request reverts the changes from #1440 ("Change Iran's flag to the original Sun & Lion") by restoring the 🇮🇷 Iran flag emoji to the version that has been the official state flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979 and is recognized internationally.
Rationale
(You can verify this in real-time via Emojipedia or vendor font previews.)
Changes in this PR
assets/svg/1f1ee-1f1f7.svgandassets/72x72/1f1ee-1f1f7.pngwith the official post-1979 flag SVG (sourced fromd94f4cf793e6d5ca592aa00f58a88f6a4229ad43commit).References
This change promotes consistency across emoji platforms, adheres to established international standards, and avoids politicization of a standardized glyph set used by billions.
Happy to make style tweaks or address rendering differences if needed.