Iran

Did German Chancellor Friedrich Merz use $550 million of state funds to build a private "doomsday" plane? No, that's not true: There is no credible evidence or proof that Merz commissioned a fortified warplane. The website that published the article was registered one day before the publication of the story and is not an established media organization. An online detection…

Did U.S. President Donald Trump write a post about winning "the Iran thing" in a "Bigly" way on March 19, 2026? No, that's not true: The post did not originate from Trump's account. The image of the entry, as it first appeared on social media, carried a satire label. The claim originated from a post (archived here) published on X…

Was a video about Ukrainian drone operator Miroslav Radchenko shared on social media actually produced and distributed by Al Jazeera? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no traces of such a report broadcast or shared online by Al Jazeera or any other media outlet. Spreading false narratives through clips with logos of real media organizations is a known tactic…

Does a real video show Iranian missiles striking the middle of an Israeli city at night? No, that's not true: This video is AI generated. Glitches typical of AI-generated content are visible in the video. In the foreground at the start of the video, the building in the lower right corner seems to spontaneously crumble. In the midground, the buildings…

Does a viral video purporting to show the ruins of an Amazon data center in the Middle East document a real scene? No, that's not true: The video contained multiple signs pointing to AI, including an incorrectly spelled company's name and a person who appears headless and then grows a head in less than a second. According to Google, the…

Do social media posts prove that the Israeli Prime Minister's office reused a photo originally published on Feb. 4, 2026? No, that's not true: The claim appears to have been based on a known Google image search glitch, not evidence of photo reuse. The photo was not part of an article about Spain published on Feb. 4, 2026. Lead Stories…

Is this a real video of an airstrike on a U.S. base in Qatar? No, that's not true: An online AI video detection tool determined that the clip is 83.3 percent "likely to be AI-generated." A separate tool identified typical AI "hallucinations," including a distorted U.S. flag, static lighting during the blast, unrealistic smoke and debris interactions, and unusually clear…

Did a news helicopter capture live footage showing a crew of paramedics chasing a runaway gurney as it careened down a grassy slope? No, that's not true: The scene featuring a fake "Chopper 5 - Breaking News" chyron is AI-generated. There are several clues that the video is not real. Three blurred areas in the video frame indicate the positions…

Are U.S. soldiers "openly refusing orders" to deploy "en masse" to Iran as a viral Facebook post claimed? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that large numbers of American service members are refusing deployment orders. Claims circulating on social media misrepresent online activity, and the hashtags #SoldiersRefuse and #NoWarWithIran are not trending No. 1 worldwide with 18 million…

Does a real video show Tomahawk missiles streaking past a merchant ship "on their way to targets in Iran"? No, that's not true: This video is AI-generated. The fake video shows missiles passing dangerously close to the ship and glitchy text on its containers. Although this video is fake, there is real footage that was filmed from a container ship…