State TV in Iran posted a dramatic video it claimed to be the fiery aftermath of a missile strike in Israel – but was actually from a forest fire in Chile earlier this year.
The propaganda report suggested that the Nevatim air base in the Negev desert exploded in a fireball, despite Israel — which shot down 99% of the drones and missiles fired Saturday by the Islamic Republic — reporting negligible impact, the Times of Israel reported.
A reporter for a fact-finding division of the BBC initially thought the footage was from a fire in Texas from March, before updating it to confirm the clip was from a forest fire in Chile from February.
Other footage that Iran’s state TV claimed showed Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City celebrating the attack was in fact worshipers marking the end of Ramadan, another BBC Monitoring journalist also clarified.
He further noted that a clip shared by far-right social influencer Jackson Hinkle claiming to show “Israelis panicking” during the Iranian attack was actually “Louis Tomlinson fans near Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week.”
The Israel Defense Forces managed to shoot down 99% of the suicide drones and missiles that the Islamic Republic launched at the country in an unprecedented attack Saturday night.
The Jewish state used an array of sophisticated weapons, including the IDF’s David’s Sling, Iron Dome and Arrow missiles, with assistance from the US, UK, France and even Jordan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet was expected to meet Monday afternoon local time to decide on the country’s next steps after the attack, which was launched in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Syria on April 1, when several senior commanders were killed.
Israeli officials said the war cabinet favored retaliation but was split over the timing and scale of the response.