of the war has begun As US and Israeli attacks on Iran expand across the Middle East, the video purporting to show US soldiers and military vehicles inside the Islamic Republic was generated using Google’s AI tools. There are no official reports of U.S. forces operating inside Iran, and circulating videos contain errors and inconsistencies that indicate synthetic content.
The Burmese caption for a Facebook video shared on March 2, 2026, reads in part: “US soldiers ready in Iran.”
The video consists of two clips showing soldiers and military vehicles moving slowly through a nighttime street.
This information was disseminated as Iran heavily attacked the region with missiles in retaliation for the operation in which Israel and the United States attacked targets across Iran and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei (archive link).
A series of explosions in Dubai, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere caused hundreds of flights to be canceled and chaos that nearly paralyzed the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Screenshot of a false Facebook post taken on March 4, 2026. Red X and AI symbol added by AFP
The video was also shared in similar Facebook, TikTok, and X posts in Burmese, English, and Hausa.
However, as of March 5, there are no official reports of U.S. forces operating inside Iran.
A reverse search for the image on Google using keyframes from the accidentally shared video found a higher quality version, which was posted to Facebook on March 1 (archive link).
This was shared on ‘DailymindAi’, a page that encourages users to ‘explore the iconic wonders of artificial intelligence’. The video was also flagged as an AI creation by a commenter.
The watermark “Daily mind_ai” can be seen in the video. bottom right cornerappears to cover another watermark.
Screenshot of DailymindAi video where AFP added AI symbols
A closer inspection of accidentally shared videos reveals that they contain errors and inconsistencies, which are tell-tale signs of AI-generated content. of Misoperation of military vehicles Sport emergency lights are usually equipped on police cars and ambulances, and some soldiers are in unusual positions.
Visual discrepancies highlighted and AI labels added by AFP
Further analysis of the video with Google’s SynthID detector found it was “very likely” created using the platform’s AI tools (archived link).
SynthID analysis screenshot
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation stemming from Middle East wars.
