Iran’s state media outlets have significantly increased disinformation efforts, including alleged battlefield victories which are supported by old or manipulated images, according to a report.
Since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February, 18 war-related claims by Iran were found to be false, according to the news rating organisation NewsGuard.
In contrast, five other false claims published by Iranian sources were identified in the two weeks before the US-Israel attack on Iran.
NewsGuard also found that Iranian outlets are increasingly turning to AI-doctored images to spread false claims. In many cases, these images are created outside Iran.
Fake claims and manipulated AI images
Iranian state-controlled news service Tehran Times published a satellite image which allegedly reflected the destruction of a US radar at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base in a post on social media platform X on 28 February. The picture showed the site before and after the supposed attack.
“An American radar in Qatarwas completely destroyed today in an Iranian drone strike,” the post wrote.
However, information warfare analyst Tal Hagin later dispelled these claims by highlighting that this was originally a Google Earth image from 2 February 2025, which was manipulated by AI.
“One way to tell is that all the cars stayed in the exact same location,” Hagin notedin his X post.
Iranian state-linked sources also shared a video which claimed to be of a fighter jet being shot down over Tehran on March 4. This initially led to Telegram channels linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) celebrating the video as proof of Iran shooting down a US F-15 fighter jet.
However, the Israeli Air Force later said that the video showed an F-35 shooting down an Iranian Yak-130 over Tehran.
Mehr, a semi-official Iranian outlet, also reported that four Iranian ballistic missiles hit the USS Abraham Lincoln, attributing the claim to a statement by the IRGC.
However, the US Central Command clarified on 1 March that not only was the Lincoln not hit, but the missiles did not even come close.
Similarly, an IRGC spokesperson claimed that 650 US troops were killed or wounded in the first two days of the conflict, published by Tasnim, a military-aligned Iranian outlet. However, CENTCOM rebutted these claims, noting that six US service members had been killed in the war with Iran.
In some cases, war images were also extracted from video games like Arma 3, according to Factnameh, a Persian news fact-checking website.
Disinformation on social media
Meanwhile, a recent Wired investigation found hundreds of posts on Elon Musk’s X platform spreading misleading or false content about the conflict, including AI-manipulated images and exaggerated claims about the scale of the attack, with many appearing within minutes of missile strikes.
One post, viewed more than 4 million times, purported to show ballistic missiles over Dubai but actually showed footage of an Iranian attack on Tel Aviv in October 2024. Another, with over 375,000 impressions, featured a fabricated before-and-after image of the compound of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
How does Iran spread disinformation?
One of the main reasons that Iranian state media outlets and linked sources can spread disinformation is due to the Iranian government’s almost complete blocking of citizens from using the internet.
This was described as a “near-complete shutdown” by web infrastructure company Cloudflare on 28 February, as traffic plunged 98 percent compared to the previous week.
With very limited access to foreign media, Iranians are forced to get news s from state-run radio and television outlets. Other options include the National Information Network, which is the state-controlled domestic internet network, or a state-backed messaging app, Bale.
However, according to NewsGuard, these sources continue to spread a vast number of false claims about the Iranian military’s alleged wins.
NewsGuard also reported that Russia has been using Iran’s fake claims to undermine Ukraine and its allies by claiming that Iranian missiles have destroyed Ukrainian military bases in Dubai.