Claim: A video shows Israeli citizens scrambling in panic after Iranian missile strikes.
Fact: The viral clip does not depict real events. It is AI-generated.
On 3 March, Instagram account @islambrief shared a video containing the following text:
“The way Israel tormented the children of Gaza, it is now suffering similarly from Iran’s missile attacks.”
The video is captioned:
“Recent missile strikes from Iran have caused significant impact, drawing direct comparisons to the ongoing suffering in Gaza. The geopolitical landscape is shifting rapidly as tensions escalate in the region. Follow for more updates on global events.”
It shows Israeli civilians scrambling in panic while smoke rises from buildings and a car burns in the background.
The video was also shared on Facebook. It contained the following text: “اسرائیل میں بر طرف تباہی لوگوں کی چیخیں نکل گئیں، تازہ ترین ویڈیو”
[Translation: Widespread destruction in Israel; people screamed in fear. Latest video.]
US-Israel launch strikes in Iran
On 28 February 2026, President Donald Trump announced that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in airstrikes on his compound in Tehran as part of attacks codenamed Operation Epic Fury by the US and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel. He also urged “the Iranian people to take back their Country”, terming the moment as the “single greatest chance” to do so.
Alongside Khamenei, members of his family — including “his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson were also killed” in the joint attack by the US and Israel, according to Al Jazeera. Additionally, Defence Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani, army chief Abdolrahim Mousavi, Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander-in-Chief Mohammad Pakpour were also assassinated. On 9 March, Iran announced that Mojtaba Khamenei will succeed his father Ali Khamenei as the country’s supreme leader, reported Reuters.
More than 860 people have died in Iran due to the relentless bombing by the US and Israel, according to a 3 March news report by Anadolu Agency, which cited Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour. On the other hand, on 4 March The Wall Street Journal quoted rights group Human Rights Activists in Iran as saying over 1,000 civilians have been killed.
Israel had last attacked Iran in June 2025, bombing multiple military and nuclear installments in the Islamic Republic and killing multiple senior politicians in what later came to be known as the 12-Day War. The US had joined Israel in last year’s conflict.
War justifications
However, the US has not provided clear justifications for its attack on Iran, according to CNN, which said “the [Trump] administration has delivered anything but clarity”, “declined to enunciate a consistent set of goals and motivations”, and “spent the three days since shifting the goalposts and contradicting itself”.
On 1 March, Reuters reported citing sources that during closed-door briefings to Congress staff, Trump administration officials acknowledged “there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack US forces first”. Then, on 2 March, according to ABC News, the US president laid out four objectives, saying, “First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities […] and their capacity to produce brand new ones and pretty good ones they make. Second, we’re annihilating their navy. […] Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon … And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
And subsequently, on 3 March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Israel was going to attack Iran anyway so the American forces joined in expecting retaliation from Tehran.
On 9 March, Trump told CBS News “I think the war is very complete, pretty much”, and said the US was “very far ahead of schedule”. The BBC further reported that, speaking to Republican lawmakers, Trump said the US was drawn into a “short-term” military operation in Iran to “get rid of some very evil people”. He went on to say: “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough”. The US president’s conflicting remarks have added to the uncertainty regarding the ongoing conflict.
Impact and casualties
In the initial days, the two countries also bombed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in the southeastern city of Minab, killing over 160 children. The United Nations noted that it was “deeply disturbed”, while Israel said it was “investigating the incident”. Meanwhile, Rubio explained that American forces “would not deliberately target a school”.
The strikes also targeted the historic Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tehran. On the other hand, Iran launched “hundreds of missiles and unmanned drones” in attacks on US military bases in the Gulf states, with one strike near a luxury hotel in Dubai where four people were injured, CNN and the BBC reported. “Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait […] said they had intercepted missiles fired towards them,” the BBC added.
“Eleven people were killed in Israel, officials said, and deaths were reported in the United Arab Emirates [UAE], Kuwait and Bahrain,” NBC News reported. According to the Central Command (CENTCOM), as of 2 March, “six US service members have been killed in action”. Forbes reported that at least 11 people died in Israel, three in the UAE, two in Iraq, and one each in Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait. “Israeli strikes on Lebanon reportedly killed at least 52 people,” it added.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the viral clip to trace its original source. However, we did not find any credible results.
The video exhibits several signs commonly associated with AI-generated content. For instance, while people appear to be running or moving in the footage, their faces occasionally distort, lose expressions or appear smudged. Such visual artefacts are not typical of real-life footage, where facial features generally remain consistent even during rapid movement.
Visual inconsistencies such as facial distortions in the viral clip
At several points, individuals in the video also appear to partially disappear or blur despite there being little smoke visible in the scene. This further suggests the use of generative AI as the models often struggle to maintain consistent details of faces, bodies, and objects across frames, especially during complex motion or crowded scenes.
Visual inconsistencies such as blurry individuals
We also analysed the clip with two online AI-detection tools, namely Sight Engine and DeepFake-O-Meter.
Sight Engine, which is an AI-powered content analysis platform which uses machine learning to identify deepfakes and AI-generated media. The model assigned a 97% probability that the clip was created using generative AI based on patterns detected across the analysed frames. It did not contain signs of face manipulation or traditional deepfake techniques, which suggested that the footage is not a real video that has been altered but rather entirely synthetically generated.
Sight Engine results
The system attributed most of this likelihood to diffusion-based video generation models with a 92% similarity to outputs associated with OpenAI Sora. The findings indicate that the viral clip was most likely produced using a generative AI video model rather than recorded during an actual event.
Soch Fact Check then tested the video using DeepFake-O-Meter, which analysed it using multiple AI-based detection models. The result for the video is as follows:
DeepFake-O-Meter results
We first used the AVSRDD (2025) model, which is an AVSR-based audio and visual deepfake detection method that leverages speech correlation. The model uses dual-branch encoders for audio and video to support independent detection of each modality. It rated the video 100% fake.
Next, the AltFreezing (2023) model was used. It is a deep-learning tool designed to detect fake videos. It works by analysing both visual details and changes to spot signs of manipulation. The model estimated a 97.4% likelihood that the video is AI-generated.
We also used the TALL (2023) model as it focuses on checking online videos, which are often compressed or altered in ways that hide fine details. By testing whether the video remains coherent after details are removed, TALL helps reveal manipulation that may not be obvious to the eye. It provided a 100% probability of the video being fake.
Lastly, the video was analysed through the WAV2LIP-STA (2022) detection model, which is designed to catch lip-sync based deepfakes where the mouth movements don’t quite match the speech. It gave an 88.1% rating of the clip being AI-generated.
Virality
The viral clip was shared here, here, and here on Facebook. Archived here, here, and here.
On Instagram, it was shared here (archive).
Conclusion: The viral video is AI-generated. Visual inconsistencies, the absence of credible sources for the clip, and results from AI detection tools suggest that the video is not authentic.
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