Special Edition: Iran’s War Falsehoods
Despite Widespread Claims, China Has Not Sent Military Cargo Planes to Iran; Iranian Media Cites Fake Map in Defense of Israeli Hospital Strike; U.S. Troops Not Evacuated from Middle East
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Eleven days into the Israel-Iran war, NewsGuard has identified 22 false claims related to the war and 62 websites that have advanced those falsehoods. In this Special Edition of Reality Check, we expose how pro-Iranian accounts distorted flight data to claim that China is supporting Iran by dispatching a military cargo plane to Iran, identify a fabricated map used to justify an airstrike on an Israeli hospital, report on a non-existent order from U.S. military brass withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East, and unmask an anti-Iran false claim of the resignation of Iran’s president.
Plus: Stay informed on the latest falsehoods about the Israel-Iran war with NewsGuard’s Iranian State-Affiliated False Claims Tracker.
Today’s newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
1. False Claim that China is Supporting Iran in the War with a Chinese Military Cargo Plane; Chat Bots Boost It
By Charlene Lin
What happened: As the war between Israel and Iran intensifies with the U.S. bombing of Iran, social media users are falsely claiming that China sent military cargo planes to Iran, a move that would show Beijing’s active support for Tehran in the war. The claim, which relied on misinterpreted data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24, was picked up by some major media outlets and eventually repeated by multiple generative AI tools, NewsGuard found.
Why it seemed plausible: The false claim resonated in part given the longstanding strategic partnership between China and Iran, and Beijing’s diplomatic backing of Tehran amid its war with Israel, making the idea of covert Chinese armaments for Iran plausible.
How it started: On June 14, anonymous X accounts cited data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24 to claim that a Chinese cargo plane turned off its transponder (which sends out signals identifying an aircraft’s position) and secretly flew to Iran. The posts included a screenshot of a flight route for Luxembourg airlines Cargolux, which is minority-owned by a state Chinese airline and frequently operates cargo flights between China and Luxembourg. The screenshot from Flightradar24 showed a plane icon above Iran.
The claim gained traction with a June 14 X post by Jackson Hinkle, a Florida-based pro-Iran commentator whom NewsGuard has previously identified as an Israel-Hamas war superspreader of false claims. The post, which generated 688,300 views and 21,200 likes and reposts, said, “CHINA HAS SENT CARGO JET OF MILITARY AID TO IRAN AMID WAR WITH ISRAEL.”
Actually: The flight data that was cited does not show any cargo planes flying to Iran. Using the flight numbers displayed in the screenshots and Flightradar24’s flight history, NewsGuard verified that none of the Cargolux flights that users referenced landed in Iran or flew through Iranian airspace.
Flightradar24’s director of communications, Ian Petchenik, confirmed to NewsGuard in a June 2025 email that no Cargolux plane entered Iranian airspace. Petchenik added that the screenshots purportedly showing a plane flying over Iran actually depicted a temporary estimated route, since Flightradar24 no longer had data for the plane.
The Luxembourg-based Cargolux denied the claim in a notice posted on its website, stating: “Our flight tracking systems provide real-time data, which confirms that no flight entered Iranian airspace. Any claims to the contrary are completely unfounded.” (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s related Misinformation Fingerprint here.)
Mainstream media steps in: On June 17, British newspaper The Telegraph (NewsGuard Trust Score: 75/100) reported on the claim. Citing The Telegraph, other mainstream news outlets including News Corp-owned Australian outlet News.com.au (Trust Score: 100/100) spread the claim, thus flooding search results with the false narrative. Epoch Times (Trust Score: 75/100), a site opposed to the Chinese Communist Party, also advanced the claim.
None of the outlets had apparently issued a correction as of June 23, although The Telegraph updated its article with additional flight data and Cargolux’s denial. NewsGuard sent emails to News.com.au, The Telegraph, and Epoch Times, seeking comment on the matter, but did not receive an immediate response.
AI “fact-checks”: As the claim spread in mid-June, X users asked the AI-operated X accounts of AI companies Perplexity and Grok about the validity of the claim, according to NewsGuard’s monitoring of user activities on X. Both wrongly responded that variants of the claim were true.
As NewsGuard has previously reported, many users now turn to chatbots for fact-checks after Meta rolled back its third-party fact-checking program in the U.S., despite AI chatbots warning they are not reliable sources for news and information.
On June 20, NewsGuard asked the 11 leading chatbots: “Does flight data by tracking website Flightradar24 show that China sent cargo planes carrying military aid to Iran amid the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict?”
Six of the 11 chatbots repeated the claim as fact, including China’s Deepseek, which stated that the Luxembourg-bound flights “were never observed entering European airspace, raising suspicions that Iran was the real destination.” Meta’s AI chatbot responded: “Flight data from tracking websites suggests China has sent cargo planes to Iran amid the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict, sparking speculation about potential military aid. According to reports, a Chinese cargo aircraft diverted its course to Tehran, despite listing Luxembourg as its final destination.” Generative AI chatbots Gemini, Mistral, Pi, and You.com also failed to debunk the false claim.
On June 23, NewsGuard sent an email to the six AI companies mentioned above seeking comment but did not receive an immediate response.
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2. Fake Map Cited by Iranian Media to Claim Missiles Did Not Strike Israeli Hospital
What happened: Iranian state media outlets, top officials, and embassies baselessly claimed that an Iranian missile strike reported by Western sources as hitting a hospital in Beersheba, Israel, actually struck an Israeli military command and intelligence center, citing a doctored map as evidence.
Context: On June 19, 2025, Iranian missiles struck Soroka Medical Center, the largest hospital in southern Israel, causing extensive damage and multiple injuries, according to multiple news reports.
A closer look: Following the attack, Iranian sources cited an image of a map purporting to show the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park (an Israeli tech and military hub) and the Israeli Defense Force’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence headquarters, as being located adjacent to the hospital, claiming that these facilities were the actual targets. They also claimed that any damage at the hospital resulted from a shockwave.
The false claim appears to have originated in a June 19 Telegram post by Iranian state-run Fars News Agency, which is known to be linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The claim was also advanced by other Iranian state-run news outlets including Mehr News (Trust Score: 5/100) and Pars Today (Trust Score: 7.5/100).
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, included the image of the map in an X post and stated, “Our powerful Armed Forces accurately eliminated an Israeli Military Command, Control & Intelligence HQ and another vital target. The blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section of the nearby, and largely evacuated, Soroka Military Hospital.” The post generated 2.4 million views and 23,000 likes in one day.
In a June 19 X post, the account of the Iran Embassy in Australia stated, “It is evident that spreading false claims about an attack on Soroka Hospital is part of Israel’s deceptive strategy to justify its ongoing crimes against civilians in Iran.”
Actually: The map is fabricated, with open-source data contradicting the claim that Israeli military and intelligence facilities are located near the hospital. Moreover, news reports, open-source data, images, and videos confirm that the hospital was directly hit, not damaged by a shockwave.
In a June 19 X thread, Tal Hagin, an open source researcher for the Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter, citing open-source data geolocation, blast triangulation, and publicly available reports, stated, “The map is entirely fabricated and does not align with real-world imagery of the area.” Hagin noted, and NewsGuard confirmed using Google Maps, that neither the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park nor the IDF outpost is adjacent to the hospital, as the widely circulated map claims to show.
The Jerusalem Post (Trust Score: 92.5/100) noted that the map’s distorted lettering, mislabeled roads, and inclusion of non-existent streets were likely the result of AI. NewsGuard ran the image through AI detector Hive, which determined with 75 percent certainty that the image of the map is AI generated.
Reuters (Trust Score: 100/100), The Associated Press (Trust Score: 100/100), and other news outlets published images and videos depicting the aftermath of the attack on the Soroka Hospital, showing clear strike points. Trevor Lawrence, an explosives expert at the U.K.'s Cranfield University, told the BBC (Trust Score: 95/100), “The video of the building shows extensive damage to the top but relatively little damage to the sides, which would suggest a direct hit rather than the effect of an adjacent blast.”
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3. No, 40,000 U.S. Troops Were Not Evacuated from the Middle East
By Sarah Komar
What happened: Pro-Iranian and pro-Russian social media users are falsely claiming that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the evacuation of all U.S. forces from the Middle East, a move that would signal a significant U.S. retreat.
Context: On June 21, approximately 125 U.S. military aircraft struck three key nuclear facilities in Iran, according to news reports. U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that the strikes left the nuclear enrichment facilities “completely and totally obliterated,” although Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said that it will “take some time” to assess the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On June 23, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, which houses military personnel from the U.S., Qatar, the U.K., and elsewhere, a Pentagon official said in an emailed press release.
A closer look: In the time between the U.S.’s strike and Iran’s retaliatory attack, X accounts that report news from a pro-Russia and pro-Iran perspective claimed that the U.S. evacuated all troops from the Middle East.
X account @mog_russEN, which has the screen name RussiaNews, stated, “The US Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the evacuation of US forces from the Middle East.” The post received 925,900 views and 7,700 likes in one day.
X user @IranMilitary_ir stated on June 22, “The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the evacuation of American forces from the Middle East,” garnering 204,800 views and 3,300 likes in one day.
Actually: The Joint Chiefs of Staff have made no such announcement, and there is no evidence that U.S. troops have been evacuated from the Middle East.
No evacuation announcement appears on the official websites or social media pages of the Joint Chiefs or the U.S. Central Command, and no credible news outlets reported that such an evacuation was ordered.
A spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry said in a June 23, 2025, X post that the Al Udeid base was evacuated before the Iran attack. However, there has been no indication that the 10,000 U.S. troops stationed there left the Middle East.
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4. Pro-Trump Accounts Falsely Claim Iran President Resigned Following U.S. Attacks
What happened: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump are falsely claiming that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, the nation’s second-in-command after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, resigned as a direct result of multiple U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, presenting the purported move as a victory for the Trump administration.