As the Iran war continued Tuesday, with nearly every Middle Eastern country sustaining damage from missile hits or shrapnel, misrepresented images related to the war continued to spread widely online.
They presented years-old footage as current, falsely claimed that U.S. military vehicles had been destroyed and erroneously claimed to show casualties of the war.
Here's a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: A video shows Iranian missiles falling from the sky in Israel.
THE FACTS: This is false. The video, which is a compilation of two separate clips, is from August 2024 and shows celebrations in Algeria during the 103rd anniversary of the football club Mouloudia Club d’Alger.
In the video spreading online, scores of glowing red objects fall from the sky while screams and cries can be heard in the background.
But neither clip is related to the recent Iranian attacks on Israel. The first was posted to Facebook on Aug. 9, 2024, with the caption, “Mouloudia fans’ celebration of 103 years.” It was flipped horizontally in the video spreading online. The second was posted to Instagram on Aug. 12, 2024, by a photographer in Algeria.
Neither clip includes the screams and cries heard in the video spreading online.
CLAIM: A video shows thousands of Israelis leaving Israel after Iranian attacks.
THE FACTS: This is false. It shows people arriving at Hellfest, a heavy metal festival in Clisson, France, in June 2025.
In the video, a crowd of people walks through a grassy field and along an adjacent dirt road. People are carrying large backpacks and wheeling carts with additional luggage.
The clip was originally posted to TikTok on June 19, 2025, the day that year’s festival began. A caption on the video reads in French, “Hellfest campsite opened yesterday.”
CLAIM: A video shows a nuclear power plant in Israel struck by Iranian ballistic missiles.
THE FACTS: This is false. It shows a 2017 fire at a Ukrainian munitions depot in the country’s Kharkiv region near the Russian border.
In the video, a large plume of smoke billows in the distance before an explosion sends flames shooting into the air. It was posted to YouTube on March 23, 2017, with a caption in Russian that describes the fire.
The explosions in the clip spreading online match the ones in the 2017 video. Identifiable landmarks, such as a large tower, can be seen in both.
CLAIM: Images show the USS Abraham Lincoln sinking or otherwise damaged after an Iranian ballistic missile strike.
THE FACTS: U.S. Central Command said in an X post that the warship, one of two aircraft carriers the U.S. military has deployed to the region, “was not hit” and that “the missiles didn’t even come close.” The post, which went up after Iranian leadership claimed the ship was struck in the attack, adds that it is continuing to launch aircraft.
Many images said to show the aftermath of a strike on the USS Abraham Lincoln are years-old. For example, an image of a ship sinking into the ocean with a helicopter hovering above has appeared online since at least 2021. A video of a ship engulfed in flames and billowing smoke appeared in a Facebook post from June 2025.
CLAIM: A video shows the downing of a U.S. fighter jet in Iran.
THE FACTS: This is false. It is from a military-themed video game.
The video spreading online shows a missile speeding toward a fighter jet, which performs dramatic evasive maneuvers. There is a loud bang at the end of the video and the aircraft heads toward the ground.
But a YouTube channel dedicated to military video game simulations originally posted the clip in November 2025. A caption on the clip states that “all scenes are captured in-game for entertainment and learning purposes only.” The aircraft is identified as an F-4 Phantom II.
Three U.S. fighter jets, all of them F-15E Strike Eagles, were mistakenly downed in Kuwait — not Iran — by friendly Kuwaiti fire on Monday, according to the U.S. military. Iranian state television claimed that Iran had targeted one of the planes that crashed.
CLAIM: A video shows U.S. soldiers returning home in coffins from the Iran war.
THE FACTS: This is false. It shows the dignified transfer of U.S. Army servicemembers who died in Iraq in Operation New Dawn. The transfer took place on June 8, 2011, at Dover Air Force Base.
The original video was posted to YouTube by a photographer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in the Vietnam War.
There are a number of indications that the YouTube video matches the clip currently spreading online. For example, about one minute and 57 seconds into the video, a plane taxis in the background. Additionally, the front of a blue vehicle is visible throughout most of the video in the bottom right corner.
CLAIM: An image shows the body of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei body under a pile of rubble.
THE FACTS: This is false. It was created with AI. Google’s Gemini app detected SynthID, a digital watermarking tool for identifying content that has been generated or altered with AI, in the image. This means it was created or edited, either entirely or in part, by Google’s AI models.
In the image, a body whose face is blurred is trapped beneath rubble while four men wearing hard hats and safety vests shine flashlights onto the area and work on clearing the debris. Small fires burn in the background.
Iranian state media confirmed early Sunday that Khamenei had been killed in Saturday’s attack by the U.S. and Israel. A photo of his body has not been publicly released.
Associated Press writer Abril Mulato in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
People take shelter in an underground parking lot as air raid sirens warning of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The White House Correspondents' Dinner has had multiple iterations since it began a few years after World War I.
Washington’s premier soiree on Saturday is most identified by its modern form: a red carpet for the capital’s journalism elite, political staffers and an assortment of American business leaders and celebrities — with the leader of the free world and a comedian offering roasts.
Some years are forgettable and relegated to C-SPAN archives. Others produce viral moments — funny, cringeworthy or undeniably tense — and endure across social media.
Here’s a look at some of that history as Donald Trump prepares for the first time to attend as president:
As a former Hollywood actor, the 40th president had a magnetic stage presence and easy manner with a joke, and it was during Reagan’s presidency that comedians became an annual part of the dinner.
In 1983, Mark Russell, whose satire was a PBS staple, offered relatively tame jabs at Reagan. “There is another speaker following me,” he opened, “and so it is quite an honor for me to be doing the warmup for my chief writer here.”
When it was the president's turn, Reagan demurred. He reminded the audience that he’d made “a sad journey” to Andrews Air Force Base earlier that day to receive the remains of the Americans killed in the April 18 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.
“I realize the original plan was that I would, in a sense, sing for my supper. In fact, I was prepared, not really to sing, but to do what you expected,” Reagan said, before explaining that it would be inappropriate for him to deliver humorous remarks. “If you’ll forgive us,” he said, “I’ll keep my script, and I hope you’ll give us a rain check, and it’ll still be appropriate next year.”
Presidents have been lampooned on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” since Chevy Chase first depicted Gerald Ford in 1975. But Dana Carvey and President George H.W. Bush set the standard.
Carvey, who also played the iconic Church Lady, embellished the 41st president’s nasal tone and patrician air to caricature his signature phrases: “Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.”
Bush became a fan. He and Carvey sat together at Bush's last dinner as president, in 1992. After he lost to Bill Clinton that November, the president invited Carvey to the White House for a Christmas party. The two remained friends.
In 2004, American forces remained in Iraq after the 43rd president ordered an invasion based on assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons that threatened U.S. security.
By the time of the annual dinner, it was apparent those claims were overblown. Bush made light of the situation with pictures of him looking around the White House for Saddam’s weapons.
“Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere,” he said as one slide showed him looking under furniture in the Oval Office.
The audience laughed and applauded. Some veterans, including then-Sen. John Kerry, a 2004 presidential nominee, were not amused. Bush defeated Kerry that November anyway.
Not long into his second term, Bush sat uncomfortably as Stephen Colbert, then a Comedy Central host, hammered him with an aggressiveness unusual for the dinner.
“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady,” Colbert said in 2006. “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.”
He sarcastically urged Bush to ignore his approval ratings, then in the low 30s: “We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Colbert lambasted the dinner hosts, too, suggesting Washington media protected the Bush administration.
“Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know,” Colbert said, “and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.”
During his first White House term, Trump broke the long streak of presidential attendance. Comedian Michelle Wolf targeted him anyway.
“It’s 2018, and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up — unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000,” she cracked, referencing payments made to keep an adult film star from disclosing her allegations of a sexual encounter with Trump.
When the audience groaned at her crassness, Wolf quipped, “Yeah, shoulda done more research before you got me to do this.”
With Trump absent, his press secretary and now-Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat at the head table and at the center of Wolf’s routine. Wolf compared Sanders’ role for Trump to being a character in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about an authoritarian, misogynistic society.
Her harshest barb riffed on a famous Maybelline mascara ad.
“I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful,” Wolf said. “But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
Trump, who was in Michigan, called the routine “disgusting.”
Within hours, the Correspondents’ Association issued a statement saying the dinner is meant to celebrate “our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners” and saying Wolf’s monologue "was not in the spirit of that mission.”
Sanders rekindled the moment earlier this year at Washington Gridiron, another annual politics-journalism event. “I’m proud to note that color has really taken off,” she said. “In fact, it’s the exact same thing worn by Vice President JD Vance.”
Despite not yet attending as president, Trump's had his moment at the dinner.
In 2011, he helped lead the birther movement against then-President Barack Obama. Trump used social media and frequent Fox News Channel appearances to push the false narrative that the first Black president was born in Kenya and not a natural-born U.S. citizen.
But at the Washington Hilton, Obama had the lectern — and he used it with Trump sitting in front of him.
“Tonight, for the first time, I am releasing my official birth video,” Obama deadpanned, before showing the opening scene of Disney’s “The Lion King,” when the royal cub Simba is presented on the savanna.
Obama then turned his fire directly on the reality TV star.
“No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” Obama said. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. For example, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
As cameras captured a dour Trump, Obama mocked Trump’s role on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
“We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” the president said, marveling that Trump had to decide who to blame when “the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.”
“These are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night,” Obama concluded. “Well handled, sir. Well handled.”
Trump glared icily.
By November 2012, as Obama prepared for his second term, Trump had filed a trademark application for the phrase he would emboss in the national culture four years later: “Make America Great Again.”
FILE - President Donald Trump boards Air Force One during his departure from Andrews Air Force One Base, Md., April 28, 2018. Trump traveled to Michigan to speak at a rally on the same night as the White House Correspondent's Dinner, the second straight year Trump as skipped the event with the White House Press Corps. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
FILE - President Barack Obama makes a face as they show his video during his speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington, April 30, 2011. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - President George W. Bush laughs as comedian Jay Leno tells jokes at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, on May 1, 2004. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Comic Dana Carvey, left, shows President George H.W. Bush how to imitate himself, Dec. 8, 1992, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)
FILE - President Ronald Reagan watches as first lady Nancy Reagan comments from the podium during the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner on April 23, 1987, in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File)
