Shortly following Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States and Israeli administrations had initiated a “significant military offensive” against Iran at dawn on Saturday, misinformation concerning the assault and Tehran’s reaction inundated X.
WIRED has analyzed numerous postings on X, many of which have garnered millions of impressions, disseminating deceptive assertions regarding the sites and magnitude of the incursion.
Elon Musk’s social media platform is a discernible disarray: Purported video clips of the assault circulated in messages on X are, in some instances, in fact outdated by months or even years. Numerous messages contain video footage of ostensible assaults falsely linked to erroneous sites. Many pictures shared on X seem to be manipulated or created by artificial intelligence. Furthermore, some posts endeavor to present gaming clips as actual events from the hostilities.
X failed to reply to an inquiry for remarks. During Musk’s management, X has transformed into a sanctuary for misinformation, particularly amidst significant worldwide unfolding news stories. Commencing with the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, and lately throughout demonstrations against immigration enforcement in LA, the platform has become submerged under erroneous and flawed content.
Nearly all of the highly popular messages examined by WIRED on Saturday originated from profiles bearing blue verification badges. This indicates their subscription to X’s premium offering and potential qualification to profit, contingent on the level of interaction their content produces, despite the information being untrue. Although certain messages containing falsehoods feature a community annotation added below them to rectify the information, they persist on the platform, and it remains ambiguous how many individuals saw them prior to the annotations’ display.
A video shared by a verified account purported to depict ballistic missiles soaring above Dubai; however, the footage, in reality, displayed Iranian ballistic missiles launched towards Tel Aviv in October 2024. The message accumulated more than 4.4 million impressions.
One of the most widely disseminated videos circulated on X in the immediate aftermath of the assault purports to exhibit an Israeli combat aircraft downed by Iran’s aerial defense mechanisms. This video has been distributed across scores of profiles, with one particular post garnering over 3.5 million views. While the origin of the footage remains ambiguous, there have been no reliable accounts of any Israeli aircraft having been brought down over Iranian territory on Saturday.
Another profile, purporting to specialize in open-source intelligence, uploaded a clip depicting detonations, accompanied by the description: “6 Iranian Hypersonic Missiles hit the Indian-invested Israeli Haifa port. Extensive destruction has been noted.” Although the video has been seen 64,000 instances, the clip was, in fact, recorded last July and illustrates an Israeli strike against the defense ministry in Damascus, Syria.
In several instances, pro-Iran profiles have utilized pictures and videos from Saturday’s incursions to erroneously assert successful assaults against Israel. The Iran Observer account, for example, published in a message displaying a picture of Dubai, the declaration: “IRANIAN MISSILE IMPACT IN TEL AVIV RIGHT NOW.” This post garnered more than 200,000 views before its removal, however, scores of other messages presenting the identical picture and advancing the same assertions persist on X.
Tehran Times, a media agency associated with the Iranian administration, published what seems to be an image created by AI on X, purporting to demonstrate that “an American radar in Qatar was completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike.” Tal Hagin, a principal analyst at open-source intelligence firm Golden Owl, highlighted the deployment of AI-fabricated images on X. Although accounts suggest that drone and missile attacks aimed at the US Navy’s 5th Fleet main base in Bahrain, there are no current reports of comparable successful incursions in Qatar.
A Trump-aligned profile, also bearing a blue verification badge, shared pictures purporting to display pre- and post-strike photographs of the residence of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which was struck during Saturday’s missile assaults. (In a message on Truth Social, Trump asserted Khamenei perished in an assault.) Although the post-strike photograph seems to correctly depict the palace after the attack, the pre-strike image illustrates the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, situated on the opposite side of Tehran. The message has garnered 365,000 impressions.
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