Fact Check: Riyadh Hyatt hotel on fire, CCTV footage shows attack on Khamenei? No, find the truth here
Amid prevailing tensions in the Gulf countries, several video clips and images are circulating claiming to show current military action.
By - K Sherly Sharon
Claim:Security cam footage of the blast that killed Khamenei and an image of the Hyatt Regency in Riyadh on fire have gone viral.
Fact:False. Image of Riyadh Hyatt hotel on fire is AI-generated. Similarly, 3 out of the 4 video clips are made using AI. The remaining clip is old and unrelated to the death of Ayatollah Khamenei.
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 the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
In this context, several images and videos are circulating on social media with the claim that they show the destruction wreaked by the crossfire.
Here is the media that’s gone viral and the NewsMeter’s analysis of its authenticity:
Post 1
An image showing smoke billowing out of a high-rise building at night in a popular locality is going viral on social media. This image is accompanied by the claim that the Hyatt Regency hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was targeted by airstrikes.
Sharing the image on X, a user wrote. “Targeting the Hyatt Regency hotel in Riyadh where intelligence officers were staying...” (Archive)
Fact Check
We found that the image is AI-generated.
Using reverse image search, we found an Alarabia English article published on February 28, which stated that Saudi Arabia had confirmed that Iran hit Riyadh and its eastern region with strikes. There are no reports, however, stating that the Hyatt Regency hotel in Riyadh was hit in these attacks.
This hinted that the image might have been artificially created.
Visual discrepancies
We found an image of the Hyatt Regency hotel showing the building from an angle similar to that of the viral image. This image was shared on a website, Erga.
Comparing the image on the website to the viral image, we found that there is a strange plane-shaped structure on the viral image and entire portions of another building seemed to be warped and missing; usual indications of editing using Artificial Intelligence.
To confirm whether the image has been altered or generated using AI, we used Google DeepMind SynthID detector. The tool determined that the image was made using AI.
Post 2
The second media is four recordings of security cam footage showing blasts inside what looks like a building with security personnel at work. The video was shared on X with the claim that it shows the real footage of the blasts that killed Khamenei.
The user who shared the video captioned it, “They raped, tortured, and killed thousands of men, women, and children in Iran, Israel, and elsewhere. This is how death arrived for the Khamenei regime. (sic)” (Archive)
Fact Check
Using video keyframes of the video clips, we found visuals of the third security camera footage shared online. A video shared by Ynet Global to X on November 29, 2025, contained the 25-second-long version of the third clip.
The caption of the X post states that the footage was released on November 28, 2025, by the Iranian state network SNN. Five months after the end of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the state network aired previously unseen footage showing what it described as Israeli strikes on multiple targets across Iran.
What about the other three clips?
Reverse image searches of the rest of the clips led us to the same viral video shared on Instagram by the user ‘@kaabusia’ on December 1, 2025.
The caption stated, “After months, several videos have been released showing the moment Israeli missiles struck military bases of the Ayatollahs’ regime.” The same Instagram account has shared many AI-generated videos.
This hints that the purported cam footage is also AI-generated
Discrepancies in the clips
Upon analysing the clips, we found visual discrepancies such as an undefined screen/map and mismatching depiction of the Persian Gulf in the first clip. In the second clip, we can see a digital clock with oddly shaped digits in the second clip and warped headphones in the fourth clip.
These are some usual indications of videos generated using AI. Using Hive moderation, an AI detection tool, we found that the video is 82.2 per cent likely to contain AI-generated content.
It is clear that three out of the four security camera footage are AI-generated and the third clip is an older video.
NewsMeter found that the claims are false. Most of the viral visuals are generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI) or are unrelated to the current tensions.
