Video of ‘Israel’s attack on Iran’ is from different events
IN SHORT: Contrary to some social media posts, a viral video does not show Israel’s April 2024 attack on Iran. It combines different events that took place in different places.
Note: This report includes details about a developing news story. Information was, as far as possible, correct at the time of publication but may change rapidly.
“BREAKING Israel hitting Iran but the propaganda carriers will be posting how Iran intercepted it,” reads the caption to a video circulating on Facebook since April 2024.
The video is overlaid with the text “Now 18/4/2024 from Iran” at the top and “Live now, Israel’s response to Iran” at the bottom.
The same video has also been posted here and here.
Iran-Israel conflict
On 1 April, Israel carried out a strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing several Iranian officers.
In retaliation, the Iranian government reportedly deployed drones and cruise missiles at Israeli targets on 13 April.
As tensions mounted, Israel’s response on 19 April was a barrage of missile and drone strikes against Iran.
So does the video show Israel’s attack on Iran? We checked.
Video shows different events
Africa Check noticed that the video has the TikTok handle @myus.hamed5. It also appears to show different clips from different events.
The account has posted several edited videos depicting disasters with a woman’s wailing voice in the background. For example, the same wailing voice can be heard in a video that appears to show a powerful tornado in Mecca, a city in western Saudi Arabia. It is also in a video that appears to show another tornado in the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma in the United States.
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Africa Check searched online, using keywords related to the Israel-Iran conflict, but we found no video of the Israeli attack. However, according to news agency CNN a satellite image shows that the Israeli attack did not cause extensive damage, contrary to what the video shows.
Users also pointed out signs of manipulation in the comments section on Facebook.
We also ran the video through Invid, a video analysis tool, which broke it down into keyframes for a reverse image search.
One of the frames, at 23 seconds, led us to an X post (formerly Twitter) dated 13 April. The caption of the post, machine translated from Arabic to English, reads: “A cloud of smoke after an armoured car belonging to a Lebanese person was detonated with an explosive device in Al-Huda Square in Mezzeh, Damascus.”
This shows that the compiled bits in the video were taken from different events to push a different narrative.
