Website superstv.com published in early January a false report claiming that the Iranian government will give US$80 million to anyone who can kill United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump.
Iran has made no such announcement.
The inaccurate story, which bore the headline “Anyone that can kill Donald Trump gets $80m as reward from Iran Government,” was published three days after the U.S. launched on Jan. 3 a drone strike that killed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Quassem Soleimani. Trump in a press conference said the attack was done under his direction.
Superstv.com twisted official news reports that merely quoted an unnamed eulogist during Soleimani’s funeral procession on Jan. 5, who called on the 80 million citizens of Iran to “donate one U.S. dollar each” to build a reward pot for anyone who kills Trump in revenge.
The eulogist’s speech was broadcast on Iran state television station Channel 1, leading some media outlets to wrongly take it as a pronouncement from the Iranian government. The identity of the eulogist remains unknown.
However, an Iranian legislator has recently offered a US$3 million reward for “anyone who kills Trump.” Member of parliament Ahmad Hamzeh made the announcement on Jan. 21.
The Iranian government has yet to confirm if it supports Hamzeh’s declaration.
Also accompanying superstv.com’s false article are photos of Trump and Soleimani placed side-by-side. Trump’s image was from a May 2019 interview with the president conducted by Fox News, while Soleimani’s photo was originally captured in September 2016 and was uploaded on Getty Images.
The photo at the end of the article, on the other hand, is an Associated Press photo of Iraqi military men marching during Soleimani’s funeral, taken Jan. 4.
Top traffic generators of superstv.com’s false report are Facebook (FB) groups Foreigners & Philippines looking for relationship and Friends of Kwesi Arthur #GroundUpChale, and FB page Black Book. It already got over 286,000 FB interactions, and could have reached around 2.7 million social media users.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
