Old Moscow Attack Video, AI-Generated Clip Shared as Israel’s Latest Strike on Iran 

As the Iran-Israel war enters its 138th day, misleading visuals continue to circulate online. We found that one viral video actually shows a Ukrainian drone strike in Russia, while another bears signs of AI-generated content. 

The Iran–Israel war has now entered its 138th day. Renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran are further eroding an interim agreement reached in June, with tensions escalating over the Strait of Hormuz and other unresolved issues. On July 14, Iranian cruise missiles struck two UAE oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member and injuring eight others, as the United States carried out a third consecutive night of strikes on Iranian military targets. 

Amid these developments, the information warfare surrounding the conflict continues unabated. Since the outbreak of the war, social media has been flooded with false and misleading claims originating from accounts supporting Iran, Israel, as well as the United States, each attempting to reinforce their respective narratives. One such post is now going viral on X. Our investigation reveals that the claim is misleading, as the visual has been taken from an entirely different context. 

What is the viral claim?

On July 12, an X user named @WHLeavitt posted videos showing multiple blasts accompanied by thick smoke and flames. The post was captioned: “BREAKING: Israel launches major attack with over 100 missiles on Iran, striking its largest oil refinery in a bid to cripple its oil infrastructure. Support the US and Israel overthrowing Iran’s terror regime?” As of July 14, the post had garnered more than 1.4 lakh views, 6,500 likes, and 1,400 reposts on X. 

The comment section features several posts endorsing the attack and expressing anti-Iran sentiments. One user commented, “Yes eliminate these terrorists”, while another wrote, “This 47-year-old war by Iran & proxy has hurt the entire world! No nation should be trying to invade free nations to eventually dominate & hold the people hostage to a stringent political & religious shakedown! These warring Islamist threats need to STOP!”

Similar claims have also spread across several other accounts on X, with users sharing the same visuals.

What did we find?

A reverse image search using keyframes from the first video led us to an Instagram reel uploaded by the account NTD News. The video was dated June 16, 2026. Its description states that ‘A Ukrainian drone attack damaged a facility at a Moscow oil refinery owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Tuesday. Video footage published on social media shows the strike and its aftermath’. 

We further ran a keyword search, which led us to multiple news reports. According to these reports, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said a Ukrainian drone strike had hit a facility at the Moscow oil refinery owned by Gazprom Neft. In a post on Telegram, Sobyanin said there were no casualties and that emergency services were working at the scene.

This establishes that the viral video is not related to the ongoing Iran–Israel conflict. Instead, it shows a Ukrainian drone attack on a Moscow oil refinery in Russia that took place in June 2026 and has been falsely recirculated in an entirely different context.

A reverse image search using keyframes from the second viral video led us to a Facebook video uploaded on March 14 by an account called Aviation MN. In the caption, the account explicitly states: “This video was created with AI and is intended for entertainment purposes only”. 

To double check whether the footage is artificially generated, we analysed it using Hive Moderation, an AI detection tool. The tool found that the video is 63% likely to be AI-generated, categorising it as ‘likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content’.

This indicates that the video is unlikely to depict a genuine incident from the ongoing Iran–Israel conflict. Instead, it appears to have been artificially generated and circulated to manufacture a false narrative around the war.

Neither of the videos is related to the ongoing Iran–Israel conflict—one is footage of a Ukrainian drone attack on a Moscow oil refinery in June 2026, while the other is likely AI-generated. By circulating unrelated and artificially generated visuals as recent war footage, social media users are attempting to manipulate public emotions and reinforce partisan narratives surrounding the conflict. Such misleading content reiterates the fact that information warfare continues to accompany the military conflict online.