As with most things these days, the early days of the U.S. military operation in Iran have led to a lot of viral things on social media that aren’t true. This has been everything from false reports of Tel Aviv in flames, to fake reports about U.S. planes being shot down, to various images, whether of attacks or protests, that are from previous wars or previous years.
One such fake post fooled a Republican governor.
According to the Daily Beast, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “was duped by video game footage and believed he was watching actual war footage between the U.S. and Iran.”
Abbott shared the post from someone else.
Gov. Greg Abbott tonight reposted — and then deleted — a video clip claiming to show a U.S. vessel shooting down an Iranian plane.
“Bye bye,” he wrote.
But it’s not real. The clip, commenters pointed out, appears to come from a WWII video game called War Thunder. #txlege pic.twitter.com/FAtgx9krkJ
— Alex Driggars (@AlexDriggars) March 2, 2026
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“An Iranian plane VS a US ship. I could watch this all day,” Abbott wrote over footage, which turned out to have come from a World War II video game called War Thunder.
“The video shows simulated footage from a video game depicting a battleship; the US Navy has no battleships in service and no Iranian plane attack on a US ship has occurred,” a community note said on the post.
The governor went on to delete the post, although the original poster did not delete it.
An Iranian plane VS a US ship.
I can watch this all day 😂 pic.twitter.com/qjLH2rA8V1
— Joel Fischer 🇺🇸 (@realJoelFischer) March 1, 2026
Wired reported over the weekend about massive amounts of misinformation and disinformation on X in the opening days of the military operation.
“WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack,” the Wired post said. “Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
