A Filipino-owned Facebook page shared an old video of a massive explosion, falsely claiming that it shows the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities amid rising tensions with Israel. This video was taken in Lebanon in 2020.
The reel was published on June 22 and featured overlaid text using symbols and numbers in place of some letters, which read:
“USA b!nomb@ ang mga Nucle@r Facil!ty ng Iran
Dito na ba matatapos ang g!yer@ o pagsis!mula ng W0rlddd W@rrrr III
(The U.S.A. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities
Is this the end of the war or the beginning of World War III)”
This is false.
A reverse image search using Google and TinEye revealed that the horizontally flipped clip shared by the Filipino netizen matches footage of the massive explosion at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020. The original video was published by independent media outlet Beirut Today on X (formerly Twitter).
Media organizations at that time reported that officials linked the explosion to highly explosive materials—2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate—stored in a warehouse at the port for six years.
A copy of the same footage was also published by news organizations such as The Guardian, BBC News, and Sky News.
The spurious FB video surfaced on the same day when the US struck three nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan—in Iran on June 22.
Uploaded by FB page Wishgen Family (created on May 14, 2023), the false video has so far garnered 22,300 reactions, 692 comments, 1,300 shares, and 3.1 million views.
