Does a viral video show the real-life aftermath of an Iranian attack hitting several skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, Israel? No, that's not true: The video digitally exaggerated the impact of a projectile hitting a specific area of that city. Lead Stories analysis found signs pointing to generative AI as the likely origin of the viral clip.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on June 16, 2025. It opened:
Hello Tel Aviv. 👋🏻
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The entry was published on the fourth day of a round of the escalation between Israel and Iran in June 2025 (archived here), implying that the image authentically portrayed the damage resulting from Iran striking Tel Aviv (archived here), among other places, in response to Israel's operation that killed Iran's top generals and nuclear scientists (archived here).
A much higher-quality video version of the image was published two days earlier by a network of accounts on social platforms:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
However, multiple reverse image searches did not show that the video was used by credible media outlets or that they published other images of the same scene.
One sign that the video is not authentic was the presence of light traffic in what was portrayed as a very recent potentially mass-casualty scene with smoke still rising from the attack: The roads around the supposedly hit buildings were not blocked, no traffic jams are seen nearby and no sizeable evacuation could be seen.
Furthermore, unlike many details in the image that are unusually clear from a distance, the big letters in the building's name were illegible, which is consistent with what generative AI generally still has a hard time with: typography.
Lead Stories analysis showed that the green tower in the video matched the appearance of the Tel Aviv Government Complex building surrounded by several adjacent highrises, but the real inscription on its top did not match authentic photographs of the building:
(Source: Google Maps screenshot by Lead Stories)
(Source: Google Earth screenshot by Lead Stories)
Earlier, the New York Times reported (archived here) that June 13, 2025 verified videos (archived here) showed a projectile hitting The Kirya area of the city (archived here) where the Tel Aviv Government Complex and many other government and military buildings are located. Yet, the available visual evidence -- for example, here (archived here) -- suggests that the scale of the damage was not anywhere close to what the clip on social media purported to portray.
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Other Lead Stories articles mentioning the June 2025 escalation between Israel and Iran can be found here.
