In an escalation late on June 21, US B-2 Spirit stealth bombers joined Israeli forces in a surprise strike on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, dropping massive bunker-buster bombs on Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan as part of what officials are calling Operation Midnight Hammer.
After an 18-hour covert mission, seven B-2s returned to Missouri, prompting the Pentagon to declare the operation a "spectacular military success." On June 23, Tehran launched retaliatory missile strikes against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
As news of the US strikes spread, social media platforms were quickly flooded with dramatic videos purporting to show the bombings. Many of these, however, are either digitally manipulated or falsely repurposed. DW Fact Check has investigated several of the viral clips.
Claim: "US missile hits Iran," wrote one TikTok user on a video that shows a massive explosion near or inside a city, with a mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke rising into the sky. Other versions of the same video have appeared across platforms like X and YouTube, reaching millions of users in different languages.
DW Fact Check: Fake
The video is generated with artificial intelligence, and has no connection to the actual US strike on nuclear sites in Iran.
The earliest known source of the clip is a social media account that clearly states in its description that all of its content is AI-generated. A reverse image search of...
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