Misleading: Viral Tehran strike video shows old footage and misidentifies man in image
On July 20, an X post claimed that the U.S. military had killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official Ismail Masri in a major strike on Tehran.
It also said Masri was responsible for a bombing of residential areas in the United States that killed more than 100 people. The post drew nearly 4,300 likes and 600 shares on X.
However, the post contains several inaccuracies. Ismail Masri was a Hamas commander, not an Iranian military official, and he was killed in Gaza in June 2026.
The split-screen video in the post shows a four-month-old Israeli strike in Tehran, with no known IRGC headquarters in sight on the left. On the right, it shows Mohsen Rezaee, a living Iranian military adviser and former IRGC commander, not Ismail Masri.
The post, presented as breaking news, came from an account labeled as a parody account, but many X users appeared to have replied to or reposted it without questioning its authenticity.
Ismail Masri not linked to Iran
The viral post claimed that Ismail Masri was killed in a U.S. strike in Tehran. But according to The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel (archived here and here), Masri was killed in a joint Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet operation in Gaza on June 23.
He was the military defense chief for Hamas’ Rafah Brigade in Gaza. The Israeli military described him as a “senior figure” in the brigade who was “responsible for advancing activities intended to harm the IDF’s freedom of action in the Gaza Strip,” according to The Times of Israel.
No credible reports connect Masri to IRGC or to any U.S. military action.
The man in the video
The person shown in the accompanying image of the viral post is Mohsen Rezaee, former commander-in-chief of the IRGC between 1981 and 1997 and currently a member of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, not Ismail Masri as claimed.
A reverse image search using TinEye traced the image of Rezaee to the Persian news site Khabar Farsi as early as January 2017, indicating that the portrait photo was taken more than nine years ago.
Iran International and CNN (archived here and here) describe Rezaee as a former IRGC commander who now serves as a military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
On July 17, The Times of Israel (archived here) reported that Rezaee publicly warned against U.S. escalation or any attempt to seize Iranian territory, which underscores that he is alive and active in Iranian politics.
The video was filmed four months ago
We found a wider-angle version of the video released by the Israeli military on March 17, 2026.
According to Israel National News and GMA News (archived here and here), the footage shows IDF striking Basij posts in Tehran, not any known IRGC headquarters.
NBC News (archived here) reported that the attack followed the elimination of Gholam Reza Soleimani, the Basij unit commander and Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official.
The IDF held a press briefing (archived here) on the same day, and a spokesperson showed the same footage while speaking in Hebrew.
We used a machine translation tool, and according to its interpretation, the spokesperson said the IDF was pursuing and hunting down Basij operatives at checkpoints, in tents, and wherever they were.
No evidence of a US strike on IRGC headquarters
Annie Lab reviewed U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)’s official X account to count U.S. strikes against Iran over the past one month.
As of July 20, there were 14 attacks, mainly targeting IRGC naval infrastructure, including small boats, coastal radar sites, coastal surveillance assets, and defense systems.
CENTCOM (archived here) said “the strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz” in a post.
None of the posts we reviewed mentions headquarters or IRGC headquarters.
The most recent reported damage to IRGC headquarters by the U.S. military occurred between late February and early March, according to the BBC.
We did not find any report about IRGC headquarters being damaged during the July campaigns, although CENTCOM did use the phrase “Iranian military command centers” in their X posts on July 15, July 19 and July 20.
Other posts also misidentify the man
The same video also circulated on Facebook and through another X account in recent months, falsely identifying the person as Walid Haniyeh who is described as Hamas commander.
Taiwanese media outlet NewTalk also used the image of the video in its report, misidentifying the man. The report later appeared on news portals such as Yahoo News and LINE.
