Claim: An image from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged recent visit to the UAE shows the Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed placing a crown on the former’s head as part of a “royal welcome.” Another shows him personally driving Netanyahu in a car.
Fact: No such photographs exist in the public domain. The images are AI-generated.
On 30 May 2026, journalist Harmeet Singh posted a video compilation of images on X, overlaid with Arabic and English language captions, that were purportedly from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged recent trip to the United Arab Emirates.
The caption of Singh’s X post states:
[Translated from Urdu: “During the war, during Netanyahu’s secret visit to the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan personally drove Netanyahu’s car, and he was given royal protocol.”]
Key images in the video appear to show UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan placing a crown on Netanyahu’s head, driving a car with the latter in the passenger seat, sitting next to him during a rooftop gathering, and greeting him at the airport. While the video contains several images, Soch Fact Check chose six of them as the focus of this analysis because they depict the two heads of state together.
Key images from the video shared by Harmeet Singh.
The purpose of this article is to fact-check these images, not claims of the visit.
Netanyahu’s Visit to the UAE
On 13 May 2026, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office claimed that Netanyahu had visited the UAE during the US-Israel war with Iran. In a statement issued on X, they termed the meeting a “historic breakthrough” in bilateral relations.
However, the UAE has released a statement categorically denying Israel’s claim. According to the Israeli news agency i24NEWS, officials of the Gulf state also privately expressed anger over Tel Aviv’s decision to publicise the covert visit.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s former spokesperson Ziv Agmon, who claimed to have accompanied the Israeli Prime Minister on the visit, stated in a Facebook post that the latter was “received in Abu Dhabi with royal honors” and that UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed “drove the Prime Minister himself in his personal car from the plane to the palace.”
A recent report by CNN cited several Israeli officials as saying that Israel-UAE relations have been bolstered by the recent war, with Netanyahu reportedly going as far as to provide the Gulf state with defence resources when the latter was subject to Iranian attack.
Officially, an Israeli head of state has visited the UAE only once. Then Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made a trip in 2021, the year after relations between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv were normalised with the signing of the Abraham Accords.
According to a Times of Israel report, Netanyahu made a covert trip to the UAE in 2018 as well. There were plans for him to visit the UAE in March 2021 and again in January 2023 but, ultimately, neither trip took place.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check searched for authentic photographs of the meeting online but did not find any. Had such photographs existed, they would likely be published by credible international news outlets.
A reverse-image search of keyframes from the video also did not reveal any credible source. Instead, an analysis of these images showed multiple inconsistencies and hallmarks of AI-generated content.
The Crowning (Images 1 and 2)
Consider the video’s opening image, which depicts Mohammed bin Zayed placing a crown on Netanyahu’s head. The claim that a head of state would crown a foreign leader during a diplomatic visit warrants skepticism as is, and seems particularly outlandish in light of the fact that crowns are not native to Arab culture. The UAE President himself wears a headdress known as the ghutra. This appears to be a literalistic rendering — often characteristic of AI software — of Agmon’s claim that Netanyahu was “received with royal honors.”
Soch Fact Check then ran the image through the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which concluded that there was a 99.9% chance it had been created using AI.
Another AI detection tool, Image Whisperer, concluded: “This image… is entirely AI-generated, as evidenced by severe anatomical distortions in the hands and a synthetic, airbrushed texture across all faces. While some low-level frequency models like SPAI (1%) and CommFor (0%) did not flag the file due to heavy social media compression and screenshot artifacts, structural models like HiFi-Net++ (80%) and PerspectiveFields (86%) strongly identify the scene as synthetic and physically inconsistent.”
Result of the scan of Image 1 on Image Whisperer.
Additionally, another frame in the video (see 0:30) which shows the alleged crowning depicts an entirely different crown. Hive Moderation also rated this frame 99.9% likely to be AI-generated.
Comparison of Image 1 and Image 2, showing the crowning.
The Drive (Images 3 and 4)
Similarly, the two images that show the UAE President personally driving the Israeli premier (see 0:08, 0:41) show different times of the day. According to Hive Moderation, Image 3 (left) is 79.2% likely to be AI-generated, while Image 4 (right) returned a 99.9% score.
Comparison of Image 3 and Image 4, showing the drive.
The Rooftop Gathering (Image 5)
A woman with a distorted face appears in the background of the image (see 0:33). Furthermore, the skyline, which shows — from left to right — the Abu Dhabi landmarks Etihad Towers, Bab al Qasr Hotel and Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, is incongruous with the actual skyline in this area (see here). The mosque appears significantly larger and closer to the dual-tower hotel than it actually is. This image was rated 99.9% likely to be AI-generated by Hive Moderation as well.
Image 5, showing the rooftop gathering.
The Airport (Image 6)
Finally, a sixth key image in the video, which depicts Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed greeting Netanyahu at the airport (see 0:51), also contains distorted faces in the background as well as an Israeli flag with unnatural-looking edges. This image was rated 99.9% likely to be AI-generated by Hive Moderation.
Image 6, showing the two heads of state at the airport.
While the video captions quote Agmon’s statement on the alleged visit, Soch Fact Check concludes that the images are not real based on the extensive evidence of AI-generated content.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim in two X posts by local users where it had amassed a collective 48,000 views. It was also posted on Facebook at least 17 times in Pakistan and shared on Instagram and Tiktok as well.
The video was originally posted on Instagram and Facebook by an Arabic-language digital media platform called ‘Tripod’, which describes itself as “a true voice conveying the Palestinian cause to the world.” The outlet has a significant audience, with 120,000 followers on Facebook and 21,000 on Instagram.
The original Instagram post.
Conclusion: The images appear to be AI-generated. There are no publicly available images of the Israeli Prime Minister’s alleged visit to the UAE amid the war with Iran.
Background image in cover photo: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com.