Old blast videos falsely depicted as US strikes on Iran
"The first video of the explosion in Iran after the US attack witnessed by a foreign affairs expert has emerged online," reads the Burmese-language caption to footage of a massive night-time explosion, shared on Facebook June 22, 2025.
Another post from the Philippines shared a six-second clip of a massive fireball with the caption: "Breaking! USA bombs Iran's Fordow Nuclear site on Saturday!"
Similar posts surfaced in Israel and Malaysia hours after the United States launched strikes on a key underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, along with Iranian nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz (archived link).
Iran and Israel have been trading deadly fire in their most intense confrontation in history since Israel carried out surprise attacks against Iran on June 13 (archived link).
US President Donald Trump said a ceasefire between the Middle East foes was in force on June 24, urging both sides to "not violate it" (archived link).
However, both clips predate the war that have killed hundreds in Iran and two dozen in Israel.
A combined reverse image and keyword search on Google found higher quality versions of the first video in multiple news reports about a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian ammunition depot in Tver region in September 2024 (archived here and here).
A Ukrainian drone attack on an arms depot in Russia's western Tver region on September 18, 2024 sparked a massive blaze that led to the evacuation of nearby residents, AFP reported at the time (archived link).
Further keyword searches found an X post from an account specialising in geolocating military activities from the Russia-Ukraine war that analysed the clip (archived link).
Using details from the analysis, AFP was able to confirm the video was filmed in Toropets by comparing features with Google Maps street imagery of the Russian town.
Another reverse image search traced the second video to several news reports including Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera and NBC News on December 16, 2024 about Israeli strikes in Syria's coastal Tartus region, a week after the latter's president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown (archived here, here and here).
The area mentioned in the reports is nearly two kilometres away from the village of Bmalkah, in the hills above Tartus, where an AFP journalist saw roads filled with shattered glass and shreds of roller doors (archived here and here).
The force of blasts had stripped the leaves of olive trees in groves surrounding the village, and smoke still rose from nearby hillsides.
The clip has also been debunked by AFP in Arabic.
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