A 13-Year-Old Air Base Video and a Months-Old Tehran Fire: How Viral Posts Distorted the War Narrative 

As the war continues, misleading posts are using old footage to create a sense of urgency and impending catastrophe. An examination of two viral videos reveals how recycled visuals are shaping online perceptions of the conflict. 

Nearly three months have passed since US and Israeli forces launched the war, the death toll has climbed to at least 3,468 in Iran, with Iranian retaliatory strikes killing over 26 Israelis and 13 US soldiers across the region. A Pakistan-brokered ceasefire in April collapsed without a lasting deal. Though a fresh US-mediated truce between Israel and Lebanon was agreed upon this week, it was breached within hours — with both Iran and Hezbollah rejecting its terms. 

As diplomatic signals remain mixed, the information war is raging just as fiercely online. Old videos, recycled footage from past conflicts, and entirely unrelated visuals are being widely shared on social media by actors on both sides — weaponizing fear and confusion to amplify the terror of war.

Two videos are being widely circulated online by X accounts promoting competing narratives in the conflict. One video shows fighter jets lined up on the ground and is being falsely shared as footage of Israeli military preparations, accompanied by claims that the “war has started”. The other video, which is only a few months old, shows thick smoke billowing from a fire among buildings at night, falsely claiming to show a US Army facility.

‘A bad night for Iran’: Was this video really showing Israel’s war preparations? 

On June 3, an account called @IsraelSpoofX posted a video of fighter jets lined up on a runway . The caption said, “War started. Tonight will be a bad night for Iran”. As of June 5, the video had garnered around 340,000 views, 4,500 likes, and 612 reposts.

One of the 505 comments read, “Nothing to see here—just demons doing what demons do (Zionism)”.  Most of the comments criticized Israel and U.S military actions, believing the video to be genuine. Another commenter wrote, “Iran could end Israel tomorrow if they wanted. They just are not genocidal maniacs like you fucking Zionists”.

The same video was also shared across Instagram with captions such as, “Iran has been given just 24 hours”, and “After that, the world could witness one of the most devastating airstrikes ever”. 

We performed a reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This led us to the original footage, which was uploaded on April 19, 2013, to a verified YouTube channel with more than 1.6 million subscribers called AiirSource Military. The video is titled “Massive USAF F-16 Elephant Walk at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea.” The channel credits SSgt Michael Schocker of the 8th Fighter Wing Public Affairs as the source.

We also found that SSgt Michael Schocker had captured other videos of Kunsan Air Base that were distributed through the U.S. military’s media centre, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). These videos are available on the DVIDS website.

This shows that the footage being shared as a recent video of an Israeli military base is actually a 13-year-old video from Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.

This dramatic night-time footage is from an earlier phase of the Israel- Iran conflict, not the recent attacks 

On June 5, an X user called American Army shared a video showing what appears to be a large fire or explosion illuminating the night sky, with thick smoke rising above the buildings. The caption read: “We are fighting a war. Tonight will be IRAN last night. Pray For US ARMY”. The post implied support for the U.S. side in the conflict and suggested that Iran was facing its end. 

The post gained around 25,000 views and 895 likes. One comment read: “You damn right, we will pray for the U.S. military. The Iranian people are in the depths of hell and have cried out many times, over the decades, for international intervention. Their country has been hijacked. Save Iran, save Asia”.

Upon conducting a reverse image search, we found that the video was not recent, but dated  to March 2026. News reports carrying the same footage identified it as a fire raging at the Shehran oil depot on the outskirts of northern Tehran following an Israeli attack on March 7, 2026. The footage shows thick smoke and flames rising from the fuel storage facility after it was struck during the conflict.

This shows that while the video is related to the Israel-Iran conflict, it is not recent footage from the latest escalation, as implied by the viral posts.

Both clips were deliberately shared with false context — one a 13-year-old video from South Korea, the other months-old footage from an earlier phase of the conflict — packaged with urgent captions to manufacture fear and push audiences into emotional reactions. In a war already marked by bloodshed, recycled visuals are being used as weapons of their own kind.