As the war between Israel and Hamas threatens to spread to the wider region, some social media users claim that neighboring countries have declared war on Israel, including Turkey and Iran.
A video showing Turkey moving a warship towards Gaza to defend Palestinians from Israeli attacks has been widely shared on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in recent days.
“Turkey moved a warship towards Gaza saying it would defend Gaza from Israel as tensions rose in the Middle East. This is getting interesting,” one account tweeted.
The request comes as Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on October 25 he said Hamas was not a terrorist organization and canceled a planned trip to Israel, exacerbating already existing tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem.
By performing a reverse image search, we discovered that the video contains incorrect captions. The original video was posted on YouTube about ten years ago.
It shows an American unmanned combat aerial vehicle performing a test flight and landing on a warship.
The CNN logo was added to the misleading video to mislead social media users into believing it was legitimate news.
As for the audio, we found that it was also extracted from real news from WIONan Indian-English language news channel, with some key details changed.
In a statement from the Communications Directorate of the Turkish Presidency also denied the allegations presented in the fake news story.
“The allegation made by various social media posts via video footage showing a ‘Turkish warship en route to Palestine’ is not true,” a government spokesperson wrote.
No, Iran did not raise the black flag as a “call for war”
The second viral claim we saw widely shared on X is that Iran has also declared war on Israel.
Many shared images of a black flag flying over the golden dome of Iran’s Imam Reza shrine, a holy site for Shiite Muslims located in the country’s northeast.
“This is a call for war or revenge,” said a user X with blue check markknown for spreading conspiracy theories.
“A black flag is raised over the shrine of Imam Reza in Iran for the first time in history… This has all the characteristics of World War III,” wrote another account.
But after a little digging, it turns out that this black flag is not a call for revenge or war. In fact, on the sanctuary’s Facebook page, it is described as a “mourning flag” raised in response to the deadly explosion which shook a hospital in Gaza on October 17.
And unlike what social media users claim, this is not the first time that the Imam Reza shrine has raised the black flag.
The black flag is raised every year to mark a period of mourning for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, This was reported by Iranian state media.
In April 2023, the sanctuary raised the same black flag to commemorate Imam Ali, also considered a martyr in Shia Islam.
Image:Getty Images
