Claim: A video shows a weapons depot in Tel Aviv exploding due to an Iranian missile attack.
Fact: The video is from 2015 and shows a warehouse explosion in Tianjin, China.
Israel’s attack on Iran
The conflict between Israel and Iran moved into its sixth day on 18 June, with the two countries exchanging deadly attacks.
On 12 June 2025, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, censured Iran “for failing to comply with nonproliferation obligations meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon”. Immediately after this, Iran responded by claiming it had built and “will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility”.
The following day, Israel launched a major attack targeting Iranian “nuclear and military facilities” and also struck residential areas. The offensive killed six Iranian nuclear scientists, including Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, president of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran.
Israeli attacks also killed top Iranian military officials, including General Mohammad Bagheri, the Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces, and General Hossein Salami, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The same day, Iran also confirmed that Israel had killed “Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s missile program.” Gholamali Rashid, the head of the IRGC’s Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, was also killed in the attack.
In retaliation, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel “late Friday and early Saturday”. It also launched drones, some of which were reportedly intercepted by Jordan and also spotted in Iraq’s airspace. According to an Israeli military official, the country’s air defences had shot down many of the over 100 drones launched by Iran. The retaliatory attacks have killed at least 24 people and wounded another 380.
On 14 June 2025, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video and claimed it showed a weapons depot in Tel Aviv exploding due to an Iranian missile strike. The Turkish caption of the post read as follows in English:
“Tel Aviv weapons depot explodes in Iranian attack
Some sources say that Iran’s missile attack on the Zionist regime last night caused the largest explosion in the regime’s history.
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Iron Dome #tahran #TelAviv #füze”
Fact or Fiction?
We conducted a reverse-image search of the video’s keyframes to see if it actually showed a weapons depot in Tel Aviv exploding due to Iranian missiles. We came across results from Instagram, X, and a number of posts on Reddit that claimed the video showed an explosion in Tianjin, China that occurred in 2015.
We then conducted a Google search for “Tianjin explosions 2015”, which led us to instances of the video from August 2015, published by the BBC, The Guardian, and the news website Hong Kong Free Press. According to the BBC, the incident occurred when “a warehouse owned by a company specialising in handling hazardous goods caught fire and exploded”. The explosion resulted in the loss of at least 55 lives and “forced thousands from their homes”, The Guardian reported.
Hence, the video in the claim does not show a weapons depot in Tel Aviv exploding due to Iranian missiles.
Virality
On X, the claim was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, the claim was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
On Threads, the claim was found here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the claim was found here, here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: The video shows an explosion that occurred in Tianjin, China in 2015 as a result of a warehouse catching fire. It has no link to the recent Israel-Iran military conflict.
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Background image in cover photo: The Stimson Center
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