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 video clip appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by @rkmtimes on March 3, 2026. It was captioned:
JUST IN🇮🇷❌🇺🇸🔥 A #Nuclear test has carried out by Iranian IRGC, A magnitude 4.3 earthquake has struck the Gerash region in southern Fars province at a depth of 10 km.
This is a screenshot of the post:
(Image source: post of @rkmtimes on X.)
A reverse image search with Google Lens found the YouTube video of the nuclear test with the same watermark as the clip. The video (embedded below) was posted (archived here) by the channel @atomcentral on Jan. 30, 2023. The video is titled and captioned:
Plumbbob Fizeau Atomic Test UHD
This is a clip of the Plumbbob Fizeau atomic bomb test in the Nevada Desert in 1957. It is one of the nuclear bomb tests in Operation Plumbbob.
The screenshot posted with the mislabeled video in the X post shows a map with an earthquake epicenter marked in red. The caption reports:
Magnitude 4.3 earthquake 15
km from Bidshar, Fars Province, Iran
12:24 pm
The United States Geological Survey has a report (archived here) for this March 3, 2026 earthquake event. It shows the same position in Iran marked on the map. The USGS has recorded it as Magnitude 4.4 quake and reports the time as 2026-03-03 06:54:57 (UTC).
A search (archived here) of Google News for the terms "earthquake, nuclear test" turns up articles speculating about earthquakes in both the Nevada, U.S. and in Iran, and if they were caused by nuclear testing. In either case, no scientific evidence supports the claim that the quakes were caused by anything other than natural fault lines in the affected regions.
