Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X.
WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.
Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.
X did not respond to a request for comment. Under Musk’s stewardship, X has become a haven for disinformation, especially during major global breaking news events. At the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, and more recently during anti-immigration enforcement protests in LA, the platform has drowned in inaccurate and faulty posts.
Almost all of the most viral posts reviewed by WIRED on Saturday came from accounts with blue check marks, meaning they pay X for its premium service and could be eligible to earn money based on how much engagement their posts generate, even if the content is false. While some posts with disinformation have a community note appended beneath them to correct the record, they remain up on the site, and it’s unclear how many people viewed them before the notes appeared.
One video posted by a blue check mark account claimed to show ballistic missiles over Dubai; the clip actually showed Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv in October 2024. The post has been viewed over 4.4 million times.
One of the most viral clips shared on X in the hours after the attack claims to show an Israeli fighter jet being shot down by Iranian air defense systems. The video has been shared by dozens of accounts, including one post which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. The provenance of the video is unclear, but there have been no credible reports of any Israeli jets being shot down over Iran on Saturday.
Another account that claims to be an expert in open source intelligence posted a video showing explosions, alongside the caption: “6 Iranian Hypersonic Missiles hit the Indian-invested Israeli Haifa port. Massive damages reported.” The video has been viewed 64,000 times, but the footage was actually captured last July and shows an Israeli attack on the defense ministry in Damascus, Syria.
In a number of cases, pro-Iranian accounts have been using images and footage from Saturday’s attacks to falsely claim successful strikes against Israel. “IRANIAN MISSILE IMPACT IN TEL AVIV RIGHT NOW,” the Iran Observer account wrote in a post featuring an image of Dubai. The post had been viewed over 200,000 times before it was deleted, but dozens of other posts sharing the same image and making the same claims remain on X.
Tehran Times, a news outlet aligned with the Iranian government, posted what appears to be an AI-generated image on X which claims to show that “an American radar in Qatar was completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike.” The use of AI generated images was flagged on X by Tal Hagin, a senior analyst with open source intelligence company Golden Owl. While there are reports that drone and missile attacks targeted the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, there are no reports yet of similar successful attacks in Qatar.
A pro-Trump account, which also features a blue check mark, posted images claiming to show the before and after pictures of the palace of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which was targeted during Saturday’s missile attacks. (In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed Khamenei was killed in an attack.) While the after picture appears to accurately show the palace after the attack, the before picture shows the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, which is located on the other side of Tehran. The post has been viewed 365,000 times.
Source: www.wired.com
