STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

AI Generated

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 to the right and left of the explosions shift vertically in relation to each other in an unnatural manner.

The video (archived here) was republished in a post on X by @realstewpeters on March 18, 2026. It was captioned:

Sometimes life can be so unbelievably beautiful.

This is a screenshot of the video on X that bears the original watermark of an Instagram account:

(Image source: post by @realstewpeters on X.com.)

The original video (archived here) was posted on March 12, 2026, by @samarhamad95 on Instagram. The Arabic caption translated to English by Google reads:

Iranian missiles rain down on central Israel, causing widespread destruction to buildings.

#Iran #Israel #israel #iran

The Instagram video is much higher resolution than the copy on X, and the glitches in the AI-generated scene are more obvious. In the lower right corner of the video there is an illuminated area around a small structure, with people moving around. This area of the image suddenly appears to crumble at the opening of the video, as pictured in the screenshot below.

After the glitch washes over the area, the structure seems to be standing intact. In the midground, to the right and left of the explosions, the profiles of the tall buildings do not remain steady in relation to each other. The AI-generated city appears as if it is made of many pieces floating on waves.

(Image source: post by @samarhamad95 on Instagram.com.)

The Hive Moderation AI-generated content detection tool determined this video was "67.7% likely to be AI-generated."

(Image source: screenshot from thehive.ai.)

Updates:

• 2026-03-19T20:13:36Z 2026-03-19T20:13:36Z
  Adds video and text from Hive, AI detection tool.