Claim: A video shows Israeli citizens asking Iran for forgiveness, following Iran’s retaliatory strikes during the recent escalation between the two countries.
Fact: The video of the crowd chanting such slogans is not authentic. It contains telltale signs of AI-generated media.
An Instagram user “mbashir.afridi” posted a video (archive) that apparently showed an Israeli crowd asking Iran for forgiveness amid the recent deadly escalation between the Middle Eastern countries. The video depicts a crowd chanting, “Stop the war! Iran, we are sorry. We want peace!” Some of them can be seen holding placards, while others wave the Israeli flag.
The text embedded in the footage further states [translated from Urdu]: “Iran should stop the war, we beg for forgiveness – the people of Israel.
These people have not even seen a war yet. They have been oppressing innocent Palestinians, who did not have any big weapons to fight with”.
Israel-Iran war
Early in the morning on 13 June, Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear sites and military bases. The attacks also struck residential areas.
The missiles targeted the Natanz nuclear site, Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility, and struck the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, damaging four buildings. 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.
Israel’s attacks also killed top Iranian military officials, including General Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, and Major General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Gholamali Rashid, the head of the IRGC’s Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, and IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh were also killed in the attack.
Soon after, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, named replacements for the two top Iranian commanders killed in the attack, the AP reported.
Some 200 Israeli jets were involved in the attacks targeting 100 sites in Iran, The Guardian reported. Israel’s attacks have killed at least 610 Iranians and injured another 4,746, according to Al Jazeera’s 24 June report, which cited the Iranian Ministry of Health.
In response, Iran launched drones towards Israel, 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 29 people and wounded another 900.
It is necessary to note that official sources in Iran and Israel have not been regularly publishing death tolls during this time. Soch Fact Check has not independently verified the number of casualties reported by the Iranian and Israeli states.
The Israeli offensive occurred ahead of the nuclear talks which were scheduled to take place between the US and Iran on 15 June in Muscat, Oman. However, on 14 June, officials confirmed that the discussions between the two countries had been cancelled.
US strikes Iran
While the US initially distanced itself from this attack, calling Israel’s actions “unilateral”, US President Donald Trump later called the attack “excellent”. He asserted that more were to come unless Iran agrees to a deal with the US on its nuclear program. On 16 June, Trump warned Iranian citizens to “immediately evacuate” Tehran, and called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” the following day. Trump said the US knew where Iran’s supreme leader was hiding, but did not want him killed “for now.”
On 18 June, Khamenei rejected Trump’s call for surrender, deemed it a threat, and warned that any US “strikes on its territory” would have “serious irreparable consequences.”
On 21 June, the US joined the conflict by attacking three nuclear sites in Iran. The US pilots dropped 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, supported by the Tomahawk missiles, targeting nuclear sites in Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz.
International responses largely reflected dismay and urged restraint. “I am gravely alarmed by the use of force by the United States against Iran today,” said the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and described the US attack as a “dangerous escalation.”
China, Russia, and Oman condemned the US attacks on Iran, while Japan and Italy called for de-escalation, and other countries urged restraint.
Iran responded by launching missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on 23 June.
Soon after, the US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. However, hours later, reports emerged that Israel and Iran continued to exchange attacks. Trump censured both countries for violating the agreement, “but reserved his harshest condemnation for Israel”. While addressing the media, the US President added that “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
Fact or Fiction?
Reverse-searching the video yielded no results, and raised suspicions that it might be AI-generated. The footage also exhibits clear signs that it was created using artificial intelligence.
At first glance, the facial features of the people in the front appear real. However, closer inspection revealed that the individuals’ eyes are closed. As the camera pans from right to left, some people either have their eyes closed or have completely empty eye sockets. AI typically struggles to create pupils and eyes that look realistic, as noted in a report by Kellogg Insight by Northwestern University. In AI-generated images, “eyes may be overly shiny, blurry, or hollow-looking,” the report stated.
Screenshot from the footage.
Additionally, several faces in the footage are blurred, as indicated by the blue boxes in the image above, which is another sign that the video is AI-generated.
On the right, a red circle highlights a protester’s hand, which appears to be dissolving into the flag, showing AI’s inability to create clear images or reproduce human hands accurately. This failure to create normal-looking appendages, especially hands, is a well-documented failure of AI.
The background in the footage is also unclear, indicating AI’s failure to generate coherent content. The crowd in the back seems to fade or merge into one another, and the area, highlighted by the larger rectangle (in the above image), is blurred.
Another indicator is the text on the protesters’ placards. Though they appear to be in English or Hebrew, the writing is mostly gibberish, incoherent, and incomplete, suggesting that the footage was generated using artificial intelligence.
Screenshot from the video with placards highlighted.
Moreover, Soch Fact Check analysed the video using DeepFake-O-Meter, an initiative of the University of Buffalo which uses “state-of-the-art, open-source research methods for detecting AI-generated images, videos, and audio.” Six out of ten algorithms returned probabilities above 50%. These are AVSRDD (2025), LIPINC (2024), LSDA (2024), TALL (2023), WAV2LIP-STA (2022), and XCLIP (2022), which showed probabilities of 71.4%, 99.9%, 52.7%, 100.0%, 90.0%, and 59.5%, respectively. These results, displayed in the images below, strongly suggest that AI was used to create the footage.
Results from DeepFake-O-Meter.
Results from DeepFake-O-Meter.
Therefore, Soch Fact Check finds that the video showing Israeli citizens asking for forgiveness after Iran’s retaliatory strikes is AI-generated.
Virality
The Instagram post received 63,199 likes. It also appeared on Instagram here and here.
On Facebook here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The AI-generated footage appeared on TikTok here. On YouTube, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: A video of Israeli protesters asking Iran for forgiveness is AI-generated.
Background image in cover photo: Business Standard
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