These videos and images about the Iran war are generated by AI

AI Video & Visuals
Michael Lewis


The world’s tallest building goes up in flames, missiles rain down on central Tel Aviv, and a slain elderly leader is pulled from the rubble of Iran’s capital.

These are just a few of the AI-generated images being created and shared in the fog of regional war.

As the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran approaches one week, the battle is also expanding into information warfare.

Viral videos with millions of views are being shared depicting events taken out of context or completely fabricated.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has gone so far as to announce that it will stop monetizing users who repeatedly post unlabeled AI-generated war clips.

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Nikita Veer, head of product at X, said one user based in Pakistan “managed 31 accounts posting AI war videos.”

Middle East Eye takes a look at some of the most viral AI-generated videos that have circulated over the past week.

Tel Aviv “Strike”

A widely shared AI video purports to show Tel Aviv being hit by multiple missiles, all of which impact residential buildings.

One user posted it with the caption: “Tel Aviv, stripped of illusions, unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

Tel Aviv has been a target for Iran, and although there have been reports of explosions in the Israeli city, no such barrage of unintercepted missiles has occurred.

Most versions of this video have been supplemented with a context note stating that digital analysis by Hive Direct has confirmed the presence of synthetic elements in the video.

Another sign that this video is AI is the distortion of the solar panels on the roof of the house.

Another AI-generated video claimed to show a direct hit on a building in Tel Aviv.

“Like a lover’s poem, the rocket descended, first kissing the sky… then cutting the building in half like a heart that cannot bear its beauty,” the caption reads.

Video shows the building split in half, with one side completely collapsed and the other leaning, but miraculously remaining unscathed. This is structurally impossible.

This clip has been viewed more than 1 million times.

US military base in the Gulf

The Iranian daily Tehran Times, which has more than 250,000 X followers, published a false before and after shot of the US military base Al Udeid in Qatar on February 28th.

“Today, an Iranian drone attack completely destroyed an American radar in Qatar.”

Open source analyst Tal Hagin points out that the image was generated by AI.

He identified that it was based on a Google Earth image from October 2, and said one way to tell it was AI was that all the cars in both photos were in the exact same location.

Elsewhere, a video purports to show the moment two US military planes were shot down in Kuwait.

One piece of evidence that this video was generated by AI is the fact that the two pilots climb upwards as they eject from the plane in the video.

A parachute doesn’t push a person upwards, it slows them down.

In fact, three American fighter jets were shot down in Kuwait on Monday.

The US military said an F-15 fighter jet crashed “in an apparent cross-fire incident.”

However, Iran claimed to have shot down the fighter jet near the Kuwait border. Middle East Eye was unable to independently verify either account.

attack on dubai

Elsewhere, a series of videos purporting to show Iranian attacks in Dubai are also AI-driven.

One of the videos, showing the second wave of the “China-backed Iranian military attack” in Dubai, was viewed 6.9 million times. Multiple explosions and two jets are shown flying across the skyline.

In the background you can see the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa.

This video contains multiple inconsistencies, including distorted hands and fingers and unnatural human movements.

In another video, the Burj Khalifa can be seen on fire, with heavy plumes of smoke rising.

The video is computer generated. Several fires have broken out in high-rise buildings in the United Arab Emirates, including Burj Al Arab, but Burj Khalifa remains unaffected.

Elsewhere in Dubai, video showed a plane being bombed and pluming with thick smoke. The caption read: “Dubai Airport is closed.”

The video was fake and was later removed by X for violating its rules.

Dubai International Airport suffered damage from Iranian attacks and flying debris, but continued limited operations after being temporarily closed.

Iranian corpse

From Iran, multiple accounts shared an image claiming to show the body of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

It showed a body resembling Khamenei lying on the ground as emergency workers carrying torches removed rubble from a bomb-ravaged building.

A Reuters analysis using Google’s AI detection tools determined with “very high” confidence that the image was not real.

Khamenei was killed in a barrage of attacks on Tehran on Saturday, the first day of the war. His daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and several senior officials were also killed.

Another viral post was created by AI, showing the body of a murdered Iranian schoolgirl wrapped in a white cloth and being mourned by her relatives during a funeral.

Signs of AI include facial distortions and inconsistent shadows.

The photo was shared by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine.

Responding to criticism about the AI ​​images, she said: “It’s not about the pictures, it’s about the facts. The bombings and what was done to the children have been widely reported.”

“It could be a painting or a blank image. The point remains: Killing civilians is a war crime, especially in the context of an unlawful use of force.”

Actual footage of a funeral for children killed in a school strike in southern Iran was widely shared earlier this week and attended by thousands of people.

Local authorities said 165 people were killed, most of them girls and boys between the ages of 7 and 12.

Middle East Eye has revealed that the school was hit by a “double tap” attack, with a survivor in the evacuation center killed in the second attack.

Investigations by US law enforcement authorities and the New York Times suggest that the school was attacked by US forces.

USS Abraham Lincoln

Several AI-generated videos of a US aircraft carrier being attacked by Iranian missiles have gone viral, especially on Chinese social media.

One such video showed missiles raining down on the USS Abraham Lincoln, sending its fighter jets flying into the ocean.

The creator of this video has overlaid the news footage in an apparent attempt to make it look more realistic.

In another video, a pro-Iranian government account posted a misleading video of a large ship on fire, claiming it was the result of a ballistic missile attack on the Abraham Lincoln.

Iran claimed on Sunday that it had targeted the ship with four ballistic missiles, a claim denied by the US military.

Abraham Lincoln is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Its carrier strike group includes Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Ahead of military planning in late January, the ship left the South China Sea and headed for the Middle East.





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