“What the mainstream media won’t tell you: US military bases in Kuwait are under siege. Trump grossly underestimates Iran,” reads the caption on a Facebook Reel shared on March 20, 2026.
The 15-second clip appears to show a bomb exploding in and around a military base in the desert.
Screenshot taken on April 2, 2026 of a false post with a red X and AI label added by AFP
The same video was also shared on similar Facebook, TikTok, and X posts. The photo was also shared on a post claiming to show an Iranian attack on “the world’s largest liquefied natural gas hub in Qatar.”
This information was disseminated as Iran responded to the joint US-Israel attack on the Islamic Republic by attacking Israel and several Gulf states with US military bases in the region (archive link).
The New York Times reported that at least three military facilities in Kuwait were attacked in the first wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks, killing six U.S. service members in Kuwait (archives here and here).
However, the footage does not show Iranian attacks on US military bases in Kuwait.
A closer look at the circulating footage reveals several visual inconsistencies that indicate AI-generated content.
For example, a single soldier appears to blend into a crate, but crates and vehicles are unaffected by explosions, and the explosions are indistinguishable from each other.
Screenshot of an erroneously shared video containing visual errors highlighted by AFP
Additionally, at the end of the video, an object appears on the railing that was not present earlier in the clip.
A screenshot of an erroneously shared video with visual errors highlighted by AFP
According to analysis performed through the DeepFake-O-Meter tool developed by the University at Buffalo in New York, the audio in the video was synthetically generated (archived link).
Screenshot of DeepFake-o-meter analysis results
Separate analysis of the clip using the DetectVideo AI tool also indicated that the footage was likely generated or manipulated by AI (archived link).
Screenshot of DetectVideo AI tool results
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation stemming from Middle East wars.
