Claim: Footage posted recently shows Iran’s drones over USS Abraham Lincoln in January 2026 amid a conflict between US and the Islamic Republic.
Fact: The footage is unrelated to tensions between the US and Iran in January 2026 and, in fact, dates back to 2021.
On 25 January 2026, Facebook page ‘Buzz Banter’ posted (archive) a video apparently showing surveillance footage from military drones of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) hovering over USS Abraham Lincoln.
US-Iran tensions
USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, recently entered the Middle East in what has been widely seen as a deployment amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran. Massive protests erupted in the Islamic Republic in December 2025 that many say have been violently suppressed alongside an Internet outage.
According to reports from credible news sources and international rights groups, the protests erupted in Tehran amid soaring inflation and a sharp drop in Iran’s currency that soon grew into nationwide demonstrations reportedly calling for an end to the current government.
On 26 January, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the aircraft carrier is in the region “to promote regional security and stability”, with Trump calling it “a big armada next to Iran”.
Reuters reported that the Pentagon “is also moving fighter jets and air-defense systems to the Middle East” and that the US army announced over the weekend “that it would carry out an exercise in the region ‘to demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse, and sustain combat airpower’”.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said that protests in Iran, which reached all of its 31 provinces, erupted due to “decades of repression” and people “were demanding fundamental change and a political system that respects human rights and dignity”.
“Iranian authorities have responded with an unprecedented deadly crackdown and, since 8 January 2026, cut all internet access to conceal their crimes,” it added, noting that the death toll was in “thousands”.
The Guardian reported that while “estimates of the number killed vary substantially”, more than 3,000 deaths have been acknowledged by the Iranian government.
“The US-based organisation HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency) […] says it has verified more than 6,000 dead and has more than 17,000 more recorded deaths under investigation”, the report added, indicating that the toll may be over 20,000.
The government of Iran, however, has termed 2,427 people as “martyrs” out of the 3,117 it acknowledged were dead, signifying that these were “members of the security forces and innocent bystanders”, not “‘rioters’ incited by the US and Israel”, Arab News reported.
Following the protests and reports of the brutal crackdown, US President Donald Trump was about to order “a strike on regime targets in Iran earlier this month”. However, he refrained from doing so, saying the Islamic Republic’s administration “want(s) to make a deal” and “want(s) to talk”, Axios reported.
On the other hand, Iran’s Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, Hamidreza Hajibabaei, warned that his country would give “a decisive response” if the US actually launched an attack on the Islamic Republic, whereas Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov told “his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun that both sides must ‘constantly analyse the security situation and take appropriate action’”, Al Jazeera reported.
The publication also said that according to Hamshahri, a local newspaper, IRGC spokesperson Mohammad Ali Naini promised the USS Abraham Lincoln “would be targeted” if it “made a mistake” of entering Iran’s waters.
The US and Israel previously engaged in a 12-day war against Iran in June 2025. As part of Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump had ordered strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — using B-2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles, while coordinating closely with Israel.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the footage and found it to be old and unrelated to the current US military buildup in the Middle East.
The drone footage was released by the IRGC, according to a 22 April 2021 report by Al Arabiya. The article includes a link to the Islamic Republic’s official media outlet, Press TV, which published the same video on X on 21 April 2021; the related story is available here. The New York Post also wrote about it at the time.
We found screengrabs from the second clip in two articles from September 2023 on the websites of the Russian news outlet Military Review and Russian industrial company Voyenno-promyshlennaya kompaniya (VPK). However, further searches revealed that they match visuals posted by Press TV in April 2021 here and here.
A screenshot from the third one was traced to a LiveJournal blog post from April 2021, with the headline, “High-quality footage of one of Iran’s kamikaze UAVs”, as well as a December 2021 article — titled “Video of the accuracy of the IRGC’s ballistic missiles and suicide drones” — on the Iranian news website Khabar Foori.
However, a further search revealed that it is actually from the April 2021 military exercises in Iran and depicts Shahed-136, a kamikaze or suicide drone, according to US Department of Defense’s military intelligence organisation, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The fourth clip appears in the same X posts by Press TV from April 2021.
A screenshot from the fifth clip appeared in a 19 October 2024 post on Reddit, where it was identified as Shahed 171 Simorgh, an Iranian unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV). It was also traced to an article on the Vietnamese newspaper Dan Tri, which talked about the Iranian suicide drones exercise from April 2021.
We were able to trace the clip featuring four drones in the sky by matching it with a photo published by Al Jazeera in a 16 January 2021 article titled “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tests long-range missiles, drones.” The publication credited the image to Imamedia sourced via The Associated Press, which said the picture — released on 15 January 2021 — was from an IRGC “military exercise involving ballistic missiles and drones in the country’s central desert”.
The last visual features an article published on the Jewish Insider in April 2021.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the video that social media users claim shows Iran’s surveillance drones hovering over USS Abraham Lincoln in January 2026 consists of old footage.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim posted here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook, here, here, here, here, and here on Instagram, and here on Threads.
It was also posted here, here, here, here, and here on X. A US-based Israel supporter also shared the video with a jibe.
Interestingly, we found that some Indian users also shared the video. The Times of India stated that it was released by the IRGC but claimed that Iran said, “the footage is not new, but the message is”.
Conclusion: The footage is unrelated to tensions between the US and Iran in January 2026 and, in fact, dates back to 2021.
Background image in cover photo: Ben Mater & Akbar Nemati
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