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After Iran’s major attack on Israel, numerous images and videos of the alleged attack were circulating on social networks. However, many of them are old and show other events.
“Israelis in panic because Iranian missiles are landing in Israel” – These were the words used in a video shared on the X platform over the weekend, which supposedly shows the consequences of Iran’s major attack on Israel. Numerous young people can be seen at a street intersection, many of them screaming. However, the reason for this is not – as claimed – the Iranian missile attack, but rather the British musician Louis Tomlinson.
At the beginning of April he was in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires for a meet and greet to promote his tour, as several videos show. The excerpt from the video with the false claim, which has been viewed millions of times, actually comes from one of the recordings from Buenos Aires, near the “Four Season” hotel, as can be verified using map services. However, the video continues to be distributed in the wrong context. Even Iranian state television showed it, according to BBC journalist Ghoncheh Habibiazad.
Fire in Chile instead of Israel
Another widely circulated video purports to show the aftermath of Iran’s major attack in Israel. You can see several fires and a horizon colored red by flames, and the air is also full of smoke. According to a Venezuelan news site, this video was also picked up and shown by some television stations. This video was actually uploaded for the first time in February. In addition, it was not recorded in Israel, but in Chile. The images show a fire in Achupallas in the Valparaíso agglomeration.
Another picture shows a large fire in Tehran, the capital of Iran. It was spread over the weekend with the claim, among other things, that this was Israel’s reaction to the drone attacks. But this image is also older: As a reverse image search shows, the photo was uploaded in the summer of 2021 and comes from the AFP news agency. The picture shows this Fire following an explosion on a gas oil pipeline in Tehranbeginning of June 2021.
People celebrate Ramadan and not the attack
Other videos and images of the major attack are also significantly older. Older videos from Israel’s Iron Dome anti-aircraft system have been widely shared, which do not show Iran’s current attack, but rather attacks by the militant Islamist Hamas. Sequences from the video game “Arma 3” were again distributed with the wrong context – as was the case after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In a video, a large group of people celebrating in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem can be seen repeatedly shouting “Allahu akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”). This video is shared with the claim that Palestinians are happy about Iran’s attack and the footage proves this. But that is also wrong. Because the video was actually already on YouTube on April 6th uploaded and originally comes from TikTok, where it is on March 30 was uploaded during Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims.
Incorrect graphic with USmilitary bases
As is often the case with crisis events in the world, other users blamed the USA for the attack by Iran – the former ambassador of the United States to Germany, Richard Grenell, also wrote on X that the government of US President Joe Biden had caused the war .
In keeping with this, former martial artist Jake Shields posted a graphic that is supposed to show Iran’s supposed threat from US military bases in neighboring countries. He writes: “Iran is not a threat to the USA, but the USA is a threat to Iran.”
However, the graphic he shared is incorrect. The graphic shows, among other things, US military bases in Afghanistan that have no longer existed since the withdrawal of US troops almost three years ago. There are no US military bases in other countries such as Pakistan, as the graphic falsely claims.