Does a real video show Iranian rockets coming in at a tremendous speed, exploding targets near the Tel Aviv marina? No, that's not true: This video is fake and bears many of the hallmarks of AI-generated imagery. The video is represented as showing Tel Aviv, Israel, but the marina does not look like the waterfront of that city. There is…

Does a video actually show the moment "when Iran destroyed the US Navy fleet in Bahrain"? No, that's not true: The viral clip, which purported to show that, originated from an account that disclosed it was AI-generated. It also contained glitches typical of AI-generated video. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on March 4, 2026.…

Does a photo show damage to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that the American ship was damaged during Operation Epic Fury against Iran. The image actually shows repair crews in 1967 working to fix the damaged deck of the USS Forrestal after a deadly fire in the Gulf…

Does a video show a nuclear test carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran? No, that's not true: The video clip shows a nuclear test in the Nevada desert in 1957. The mislabeled video clip bears the watermark of the YouTube channel @atomcentral who posted the old footage of the atomic test in 2023. The mislabeled…

Did a U.S. military commander tell troops that President Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon"? Here's what we know so far: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) said on its website that it has received hundreds of similar complaints. Asked to provide the original email or identifying information, the organization declined,…

Does a viral video show a real-life scene from Tel Aviv when the city was hit with Iranian missiles in March 2026? No, that's not true: The clip originated from an account that disclosed the video was generated by AI. Both online AI detectors and Lead Stories' manual analysis of the video strongly suggested that it was not real footage…

Does a viral photo show the damage from an airstrike against an early warning radar system in Qatar? No, that's not true: This picture is fake and does not show the radar system in question. There are many differences between the fake image and the real facility visible on satellite images. The fake image appeared in a post (archived here)…

Does a viral image actually show the funeral of the children killed during the U.S.-Israel attack? No, that's not true: It contains multiple artifacts characteristic of AI. The account that was the source of the picture later disclosed that it used AI to create it. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on March 3, 2026. The…

Does a mid-twentieth-century photograph capture the consequences of a transorbital lobotomy performed on a man named "James Peterson" for being gay in 1948? No, that's not true: The image is not a photograph -- it's an image generated by the AI tool Grok, as a barely visible watermark in the bottom right corner indicated. The content of the picture contradicts…

Did Variety report that Ian Miles Cheong was killed by an Iranian missile in Dubai? No, that's not true: Only one story on the Variety website mentions Cheong, and it was published five months before the Iranian strikes on the city in the United Arab Emirates. Cheong also posted a video of himself walking around the Dubai Mall on March…