What happened: As the war between Israel and Iran intensifies with the U.S. bombing of Iran, social media users are falsely claiming that China sent military cargo planes to Iran, a move that would show Beijing’s active support for Tehran in the war. The claim, which relied on misinterpreted data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24, was picked up by some major media outlets and eventually repeated by multiple generative AI tools, NewsGuard found.
Why it seemed plausible: The false claim resonated in part given the longstanding strategic partnership between China and Iran, and Beijing’s diplomatic backing of Tehran amid its war with Israel, making the idea of covert Chinese armaments for Iran plausible.
How it started: On June 14, anonymous X accounts cited data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24 to claim that a Chinese cargo plane turned off its transponder (which sends out signals identifying an aircraft’s position) and secretly flew to Iran. The posts included a screenshot of a flight route for Luxembourg airlines Cargolux, which is minority-owned by a state Chinese airline and frequently operates cargo flights between China and Luxembourg. The screenshot from Flightradar24 showed a plane icon above Iran.
The claim gained traction with a June 14 X post by Jackson Hinkle, a Florida-based pro-Iran commentator whom NewsGuard has previously identified as an Israel-Hamas war superspreader of false claims. The post, which generated 688,300 views and 21,200...
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