Israel-Iran Conflict and AI Disinformation: 100 Million Views on Fake Content

AI dis­in­for­ma­tion cen­tered on the Israel-Iran con­flict has reached unprece­dent­ed lev­els dur­ing recent mil­i­tary exchanges between the two nations. On June 19, 2025, BBC Ver­i­fy report­ed that dozens of AI-gen­er­at­ed videos false­ly depict­ing Iran­ian mil­i­tary suc­cess­es have col­lec­tive­ly gar­nered over 100 mil­lion views across social plat­forms, mark­ing what experts describe as “the first time we’ve seen gen­er­a­tive AI be used at scale dur­ing a con­flict.” The arti­cle begins:

A wave of dis­in­for­ma­tion has been unleashed online since Israel began strikes on Iran last week, with dozens of posts reviewed by BBC Ver­i­fy seek­ing to ampli­fy the effec­tive­ness of Tehran’s response. Our analy­sis found a num­ber of videos — cre­at­ed using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — boast­ing of Iran’s mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties, along­side fake clips show­ing the after­math of strikes on Israeli tar­gets. The three most viewed fake videos BBC Ver­i­fy found have col­lec­tive­ly amassed over 100 mil­lion views across mul­ti­ple platforms.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0k78715enxo

Key Points

• Pro-Iran­ian account “Dai­ly Iran Mil­i­tary” grew from 700,000 to 1.4 mil­lion fol­low­ers in just six days by spread­ing fake con­tent about suc­cess­ful Iran­ian strikes.
• AI-gen­er­at­ed videos false­ly claimed to show 15% of Israel’s F‑35 fight­er jet fleet destroyed, though BBC Ver­i­fy found no authen­tic footage of downed aircraft.
• Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions shift­ed focus from Ukraine to under­min­ing West­ern weapons capa­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ing F‑35 cred­i­bil­i­ty through dis­in­for­ma­tion networks.
• X’s AI chat­bot Grok repeat­ed­ly insist­ed fake videos were authen­tic, cit­ing news out­lets as sources while ignor­ing obvi­ous AI manip­u­la­tion signs like self-mov­ing rocks.

Iran Disinformation Tactics: Digital Influence & Global Reach

Iran’s Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran Broad­cast­ing (IRIB) serves as a core instru­ment in Tehran’s expan­sive dig­i­tal influ­ence and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, blend­ing state media with covert online oper­a­tions to project Iran­ian nar­ra­tives glob­al­ly. The IRIB’s exten­sive mul­ti­lin­gual broad­cast­ing net­work and dig­i­tal plat­forms are cen­tral to ramp­ing up dig­i­tal influ­ence oper­a­tions tar­get­ing diverse inter­na­tion­al audi­ences, often coor­di­nat­ed with the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps and intel­li­gence ser­vices. These cam­paigns uti­lize a com­plex web of seem­ing­ly inde­pen­dent news out­lets and social media accounts to ampli­fy Tehran’s mes­sag­ing, as seen in the deploy­ment of coor­di­nat­ed dig­i­tal cam­paigns that obscure facts and pro­mote Iran­ian-backed resis­tance.

High-pro­file events like the use of fake per­sonas and pri­vate mes­sag­ing apps to tar­get activists and adver­saries fur­ther illus­trate the regime’s efforts to expand its soft pow­er. The IRIB’s oper­a­tions span dozens of lan­guages and hun­dreds of plat­forms, pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to glob­al infor­ma­tion integri­ty and neces­si­tat­ing enhanced inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion to counter these per­sis­tent influ­ence efforts. Inde­pen­dent research high­lights that Iran’s influ­ence cam­paigns are deeply embed­ded in its psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare doc­trine, com­bin­ing tra­di­tion­al pro­pa­gan­da with sophis­ti­cat­ed dig­i­tal tac­tics, includ­ing the use of bot­nets and con­tent laun­der­ing through proxy web­sites. Despite sanc­tions and plat­form take­downs, IRIB’s influ­ence appa­ra­tus remains resilient, mir­ror­ing broad­er trends in state-backed dis­in­for­ma­tion observed by inter­na­tion­al mon­i­tor­ing groups.

Exter­nal References:

1. Rise in Dig­i­tal Influ­ence Oper­a­tions: An Analy­sis into Iran­ian Dis­in­for­ma­tion Cam­paigns — The New Glob­al Order

2. EXCLU­SIVE-Iran-Based Polit­i­cal Influ­ence Oper­a­tion: Big­ger, Per­sis­tent, Global

3. FDD Iden­ti­fies 19 Web­sites as Part of an Iran­ian Glob­al Influ­ence Operation

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or in