Truth under attack as video falsely claimed to show Tel Aviv bombing

Matthew Elmas June 19, 2025
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The video shows Baghdad being bombed in 2003, not Israel under attack in 2025. Image by AAP/Facebook

WHAT WAS CLAIMED

Video shows explosions in Tel Aviv

OUR VERDICT

False. The video depicts the US bombing of Baghdad, Iraq in 2003.

AAP FACTCHECK - A more than 20-year-old piece of news footage has been repurposed to claim it shows Iran bombarding Israel's capital, Tel Aviv.

The footage actually depicts the United States' bombing of Baghdad, Iraq in 2003.

Social media users are falsely labelling various pieces of old footage to deceive people into thinking they depict the current conflict between Israel and Iran.

Side by side screenshots.
The image being passed off as present day Tel Aviv (r) was available on Getty Images in 2023 (l). (AAP/Getty Images/Facebook)

The 2003 footage appears to be particularly effective, with AAP FactCheck discovering millions of views across several posts.

"Some demo in Tel Aviv," one X user said in a post with more than 1.4 million views at the time of publication.

The Victory Arch in Baghdad
Baghdad's Victory Arch opened in 1989. (EPA PHOTO)

The video is also being widely shared on Facebook.

Israel and Iran have bombed each other's capitals, Tehran and Tel Aviv, in the past week. 

Screenshot of a social media post.
The video claims to show Tel Aviv, but it really shows the Victory Arch in Baghdad. (AAP/X )

But the video being shared shows the United States' 2003 bombardment of Baghdad, with stills from the footage matching video of strikes from two decades ago. 

One part of the video (timestamp 39 seconds - 43 seconds) shows an explosion illuminating Baghdad's Victory Arch - a monument opened in 1989 to commemorate the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.

The bombing of large buildings in the video (timestamp 17 seconds) also matches historical footage from the US bombing of Baghdad in 2003 available online from Getty Images archives. 

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Sources

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AAP FactCheck is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network