A few minutes after Donald Trump announced that the American 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.
WIRED reviewed hundreds of messages onsome of which have racked up millions of views, which promote misleading claims about the location 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 is actually months or years old. In several articles, video footage of apparent attacks has been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other messages attempt to play video game images like scenes of conflict.
X did not respond to a request for comment. Under Musk’s leadership, haven for misinformationparticularly during major global news events. At the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and more recently during Anti-immigration protests in Los Angelesthe platform is drowned in inaccurate and erroneous posts.
Almost all of the most viral posts examined by WIRED on Saturday came from blue-checked accounts, which means they pay X for its premium service and could be eligible to earn money based on the level of engagement their posts generate, even if the content is fake. Even though some messages containing misinformation have a community rating added below to correct the record, they remain on the site and it is unclear how many people viewed them before the notes appeared.
A video posted by a blue-checked account purported to show ballistic missiles over Dubai; the clip actually showed Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv in October 2024. job has been viewed more than 4.4 million times.
One of the most viral clips shared on X in the hours following the attack purports to show an Israeli fighter jet shot down by Iranian air defense systems. The video was shared by dozens of accounts, including a message which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. It’s unclear where the video came from, but there have been no credible reports of Israeli planes being shot down over Iran on Saturday.
Another account that claims to be an open source intelligence expert posted a video showing explosions, alongside the caption: “6 Iranian hypersonic missiles hit the Israeli port of Haifa, invested by India. Massive damage reported.” The video has been viewed 64,000 times, but the footage was actually captured last July and shows an Israeli attack on the Ministry of Defense in Damascus, Syria.
In a number of cases, pro-Iranian accounts used images and footage of Saturday’s attacks to falsely claim that strikes against Israel had been successful. “IRANIAN MISSILE IMPACT IN TEL AVIV RIGHT NOW,” the Iran Observer account wrote in an article featuring an image from Dubai. THE job was viewed more than 200,000 times before being removed, but dozens of other posts sharing the same image and making the same claims remain on X.
Tehran Times, a media outlet aligned with the Iranian government, published what appears to be an AI-generated image on X which claims to show that “a US radar in Qatar was completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike”. The use of AI-generated images has been reported on X by Tal Hagin, principal analyst at open source intelligence firm Golden Owl. Although there are reports of drone and missile attacks targeting the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, there are currently no reports of similar successful attacks in Qatar.
A pro-Trump account, which also features a blue checkmark, posted images purporting to show before and after photos of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s palace, targeted in Saturday’s missile attacks. (In an article on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Khamenei was killed in an attack.) While the after photo appears to accurately show the palace after the attack, the before photo shows the mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, located on the other side of Tehran. THE job has been viewed 365,000 times.
