It’s been five days since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes at Iran, resulting in an all-out war, which has resulted in nearly every West Asian country — from the UAE to Bahrain — being attacked by Tehran.
Along with the barrage of missiles and drones being fired by these countries, social media has become a goldmine of misinformation, with a barrage of fake images and videos. In fact, according to Marisha Goldhamer, AFP’s head of digital investigations for North America, the issue is widespread and across multiple languages.
On X, owned by Elon Musk, many posts showing videos of the attack are actually months or years old. Several images shared appear to be altered or generated with artificial intelligence (AI). Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.
As the war nears its one-week mark, we sift through many of the various viral posts and determine if they are, indeed, real or fake.
Did Iran, in fact, shoot down an Israeli fighter jet?
Shortly after the US-Israel attack on Iran on Saturday, a video was shared of an Israeli jet being downed by Iranian air defence systems. The video has been shared by dozens of accounts, including one post that has been viewed more than 3.5 million times.
@grok is it a real footage ? pic.twitter.com/MhQesJANON
— Sardar Shafqat Ali Khan (@s7600084) February 28, 2026
But there have been no verified reports of an Israeli jet being shot down. In fact, when asked about it, Grok, X’s AI chatbot, noted: “No credible news outlets report any such incident today amid Israel’s strikes on Iran and Iran’s missile responses — Iraq closed its airspace, but that’s it.”
Has Iran destroyed a US radar in Qatar?
A visual of damage to an American radar system in Qatar following an Iranian drone strike has gone viral on social media. It has even been shared by the Iranian newspaper, the Tehran Times.
However, this image is based on real satellite imagery of a US base in Bahrain from February 2025, which is publicly available on Google Maps and Google Earth. The before-and-after image was generated or edited with Google AI, according to Google’s SynthID watermark detector.
This image, uploaded by Tehran Times, is AI-generated.
It’s based on a Google Earth image from 2/10/2025 – One way to tell is that all the cars stayed in the exact same location. https://t.co/KkolH8egKQ pic.twitter.com/CNvkLB844s
— Tal Hagin (@talhagin) February 28, 2026
According to a BBC report, there are discrepancies in the roof of the building at the bottom of the so-called “after” picture compared with the original satellite image. Moreover, there are three vehicles parked in the same spaces in both the genuine satellite imagery and the AI picture – despite the pictures allegedly having been taken a year apart.
Did Iran strike a nuclear power plant in Israel?
On various social media platforms, one video has garnered lots of attention. It depicts a nuclear power plant in Israel being struck by Iranian ballistic missiles. One can see large plumes of smoke before an explosion sends flames shooting into the air. But the video isn’t from the current conflict; it’s from 2017 and shows a fire at a Ukrainian munitions depot in the country’s Kharkiv region near the Russian border. The explosions in the clip spreading online match the ones in the 2017 video. Identifiable landmarks, such as a large tower, can be seen in both.
Are Israelis leaving in large numbers?
Following the US-Israel strikes on Iran, the Islamic Republic began its retaliatory attacks across the Gulf nations as well as the Jewish nation.
Amid this situation, a video online shows thousands of Israelis leaving Israel after Iranian attacks. But this is false. It shows people arriving at Hellfest, a heavy metal festival in Clisson, France, in June 2025. In the video, a crowd of people walks through a grassy field and along an adjacent dirt road. People are carrying large backpacks and wheeling carts with additional luggage.
The AP reports that the clip was originally posted to TikTok on June 19, 2025, the day that year’s festival began. A caption on the video reads in French, “Hellfest campsite opened yesterday.”
Did UK minister hold a minute’s silence after Khamenei’s death?
After Donald Trump announced the death of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying “one of the most evil persons in history is dead”, a photo showed British interior minister Shabana Mahmood reportedly holding a minute’s silence for the Iranian supreme leader.
“British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud joined her constituents to hold a one-minute silence for Ayatollah Khamenei today in Birmingham,” said a March 1 post on X, which received more than 700,000 views. Identical posts were also made on Facebook.
However, there is no credible evidence that Mahmood held a minute of silence for Khamenei in Birmingham on March 1. The photograph shows Mahmood visiting a mosque in Southport, near Liverpool, according to the British news agency _Press Association_, which took the photo on September 25, 2024.
A Home Office spokesperson said the social media post was misinformation and that the photograph was taken in 2024.
Is the photo of a man found under rubble actually Khamenei?
An image depicting emergency workers discovering the body of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been shared online. The image came shortly after US President Donald Trump announced the Iranian leader’s death.
An image circulating online allegedly shows the body of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei under rubble.
I analyzed the image using SynthID, Google’s digital watermarking technology designed to identify content generated or edited with its AI tools. SynthID embeds an invisible… https://t.co/zZs5vz2BWX pic.twitter.com/CU7n3T9Fvv
— David Puente (@DavidPuente) March 1, 2026
But the image was created using AI, according to analysis by Google’s SynthID tool, which searches for watermarks embedded in content generated by the company’s AI models. The detector concluded its analysis on two differing versions of the image with “very high” confidence that it was created with AI.
Did the USS Abraham Lincoln sink?
One video even goes as far as showing the USS Abraham Lincoln burning in the Red Sea after being hit by Iranian missiles. However, this visual appears to have been generated by the Arma 3 video game, said US military officials, adding that none of the missiles launched by Iran came close to hitting the American aircraft carrier.
What do experts say?
This isn’t the first time that disinformation has been spread during a time of conflict. Similar untrue claims were made by
Pakistan during the four-day conflict last year. Also, similar claims have been made during the Ukraine-Russia war.
As Moustafa Ayad, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), told AFP, “It is really the speed and scale of these representations that is astounding, driving much of the online confusion of what has been targeted, or casualty counts for instance.”
Even Brady Africk, an independent open-source intelligence researcher and director of media relations at the American Enterprise Institute, was astonished at the amount of disinformation emanating from the Iran war. “I think it’s largely an education issue and an awareness issue in terms of making sure as many people as possible are aware of the ways that digital media can be manipulated,” Africk told the Financial Times. “People should be very adamant about finding trusted sources who work in the public eye and do so responsibly.”
Notably, the Elon Musk-owned X has taken note of the situation and on Tuesday announced it would suspend creators from its revenue-sharing programme for 90 days if they post AI-generated videos of armed conflicts without disclosing they were artificially made.
The policy change targets what the company described as a threat to information authenticity amid the ongoing war against Iran. “During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground,” said X’s head of product Nikita Bier, adding that current AI technologies make it “trivial to create content that can mislead people”.
With inputs from agencies
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