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OLD FOOTAGE, CLIPS from computer games and AI-generated videos have swamped social media alongside captions which suggest that they show footage from ongoing events in the conflict between Iran and the US/Israel and their allies.
Often, misleading posts about the war online are accompanied by text that pushes agendas. Most commonly, they have included claims that a horrific blast at a primary school in southern Iran was faked or caused by the Iranian regime. But there is no evidence to support this.
An explosion on Saturday that is said to have killed more than 165 people, most of them children, has become the subject of debate online.
No claim about Iran being responsible either directly or through a misfire has been made by any high-level official from the US or Israel. However, many online accounts have expressed doubts about whether the disaster happened at all, or have claimed there is proof Iran is to blame rather than the US or Israel.
The US has said it is investigating the incident but has not attempted to blame Iran. Israel has taken the silent approach. Days on from the blast, and with the military intelligence and media vehicles available to both countries, if Iran was responsible it seems likely we would have evidence at this point.
The explosion occurred at the Shajarah Tayyebeh school, a girls’ primary school north of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy complex in Minab, a small city in the south-east of Iran.
It was reported on Saturday morning as US and Israeli strikes were recorded across the country, including at other IRGC and navy facilities.
A significant number of accounts on social media sites such as X, Reddit, and YouTube have made claims that the building hit was not a school, or, in the words of one YouTube video: “Not one girl at the school was killed, and it’s all a big fabrication by the Iranian regime.”
There is significant evidence that the building was a school, including verified images showing brightly coloured murals on walls, depicting children, butterflies and crayons, as well as children’s backpacks, textbooks and other paraphernalia associated with a primary school.
There has also been footage released by Iranian sources also showing rows of body bags, disembodied limbs in the wreckage, mass graves being dug, and in some cases, the identifiable bodies of deceased children.
Although there is no way for international media to currently verify the body count from the blast, claims that no one was hurt are highly unlikely given that Saturday is the first day of the school week in Iran, the fact that the explosion occurred during school hours, and that half the building is deemed to have been destroyed.
Widespread claims shared across dozens of posts on various social media sites, and viewed many millions of times, suggest that Iran admitted one of its rockets hit the school.
Often, these include screenshots of a Persian telegram channel which indicates as much.
However, that Telegram channel is not associated with the regime. That channel cites the IRGC as its source, but official Iranian sources have consistently blamed the US and Israel for the explosion.
Other claims include the use of images and footage, which indicate supposed proof that there was a missile misfire in the area. One of these images was taken more than 1,000km from the school.
Another was not even taken in Iran.
“Iran blew up a school” reads an identical caption on 1 March posts from different accounts on Facebook and X, including on a post viewed more than 115,600 times.
However, another version of the claim had already spread on social media with the caption: “WATCH: Missile debris falling in Qatar.”
https://x.com/clashreport/status/2027718540099310072?s=20
This latter description is correct: although the signs, buildings, and road layouts seen in the video do not match the area near the school in Minab, they are an exact match for the Al Wakra Industrial Area south of Doha.
Many of the details of the explosion remain unknown, but there is currently no evidence to indicate that Iran either faked or is responsible for the blast at the school.
The US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said that the US is investigating the strike, but at a press conference yesterday refused to provide any updates on whether the US was responsible for the blast. While Israel initially had said it was unaware of the explosion, neither the US nor Israel have confirmed or denied responsibility.
However, the explosion at the school in Minab was not the only event in the war targeted by misinformation.
As Iran launched its own strikes against US bases and allies in the region, fake reports of their effects proliferated on social media.
“Iran attacks civilian targets? Crazy,” reads a 2 March post on X that includes footage of what appears to be the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai, on fire. It has 2.2 million views despite being fake.
Odd glitches in the video, including unusual limbs on the people depicted, indicate that it is likhat the footage was generated by AI.
Videos showing another skyscraper near Dubai engulfed in flames have also been spread widely online.
Posts saying that these show the result of Iranian strikes have accumulated more than 10 million views on the social media platform X.
The footage is real, but predates the current conflict by more than a decade. The fire shown in the footage was widely reported to have broken out in the Emirati city of Sharjahin 2015 (no missiles are were reported to have struck the building).
“Meanwhile in Bahrain,” begins a post by one X account known for spreading conspiracy theories. “Another skyscraper has been hit by an Iranian drone and is currently on fire. Notice how not a single one of these tower blocks instantly collapses, very much unlike 9/11.”
The video contains several oddities that indicate that it was generated by AI, including: people walking through vehicles; small cars with three headlights and six wheels; and a floating buggy.
Other videos purporting to show combat between US and Iranian forces are too numerous to mention; footage taken from computer games (often in the Arma series of combat simulators) have accumulated many millions of views online.
One such clip, viewed more than 20 million times on various posts on X, appears to show a US aircraft carrier in flames, sinking into the water.
While the IRGC had targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with missiles, US authorities said that none of these had hit the vessel.
There is no way to independently verify that claim, but there is good reason to think that the video does not show the results of strikes on the USS Abraham Lincoln — the markings on the deck in the video do not match that of the real vessel.
Other aerial videos said to show ballistic missiles being launched over Iran show a rocket dramatically bursting from underneath a cloud before ascending toward the sky.
While impressive, the video does not show a ballistic missile, nor anything to do with the ongoing conflict.
The video was posted to Reddit in 2024 and is said to show a communication satellite being launched over Japan.
OMG, imagine seeing this out of your plane window. It’s the Ministry of Defense’s new defense communications satellite being launched into orbit from Kagoshima in Japan 🚀👀
by u/Soloflow786 in interesting
People looking to spread misinformation often do so to push a political agenda or, commonly, just to promote their own social media accounts.
When credible reports are scarce and the demand for news high, an information ecosystem forms where misinformation can quickly thrive and spread, as readers are more likely to share news from unknown or unverified sources.
The nature of the Iranian conflict means that much of the information from it is secondary, and often comes from unreliable sources, such as the belligerents themselves.
These include conflicting statements by US officials over basic details like why the strikes were carried out, and what their war aims are.
Social media users have already begun to exploit the information vacuum.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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