Fact Check: Iran strikes high-rise building in Bahrain, fire erupts? No, video is AI generated

Hyderabad: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was reportedly killed on February 28 in joint US-Israel airstrikes on the country. Tehran called the attacks unprovoked and illegal, and responded by launching missiles at Israel and several Gulf countries, including in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Amid the prevailing tensions in the region, a video of a high-rise building on fire is going viral on social media with the claim that a building in Bahrain was hit by Iranian strikes.

Sharing the video X, a user wrote, “Meanwhile in Bahrain. Another skyscraper has been hit by an Iranian drone and is currently on fire. Notice how not a single one of these tower blocks instantly collapses, very much unlike 9/11.” (Archive)

Posts making similar claims can be found here. (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is made using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A reverse image search did not yield any news reports referring to the damage incurred by Bahrain, as claimed in the posts.

We found an Al Jazeera report from February 28 stating that the Era Views Tower in Manama, a high-rise tower, was struck by a suspected Iranian drone as part of Iranian strikes targeting US military assets in Bahrain.

A lack of credible news reports hinted that the video had been artificially generated, possibly by AI.

Analysis of the video

However, the images associated with this strike show that it is from night-time while the viral video clearly shows footage from daytime.

Upon analysing the viral video, we found a visual discrepancy in the video. At the 00:06-minute mark, we can see two cars on the road appear to be blending into each other. This is a usual indication of an AI-generated video.

To check whether the video is generated using AI, we used Hive Moderation, an AI-detection tool. The tool determined that the video is 99.9 per cent likely to have been AI-generated or a deepfake.

Sight Engine, another AI detection tool, also confirmed that the entire video is 99 per cent likely to have been generated using AI.

Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false. The video is generated using AI.