After Israel carried out air strikes on military targets across Iran on October 26, 2024, social media posts shared old photos of a blaze at an oil refinery in Tehran that they falsely claimed showed the attack. The blaze, however, occurred in June 2021 and Iranian officials said at the time it was caused by a leak in the refinery’s liquefied gas line.
“In the early hours of October 26, when the Middle East was still dark, Israel launched an unprecedented missile attack on Iran,” read the text of a simplified Chinese article published on WeChat.
A photo in the article shows buildings illuminated by an intense blaze, and thick black smoke billowing into the night sky.
It was published hours after Israel carried out air strikes on military sites in Iran on October 26, in response to Tehran’s October 1 missile barrage on Israel (archived link). The latter was in retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
A similar photo was shared in another simplified Chinese article, which said Iran’s power plants had been targeted by the Israeli air strikes.
The Israeli military said it simultaneously struck missile manufacturing facilities, surface-to-air missile arrays and other “aerial capabilities” (archived link).
State media in Syria said Israel also launched air strikes on its territory from the occupied Golan Heights and Lebanon. Iran and Syria are allies in the so-called “axis of resistance” that also includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has been fighting Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
The photos circulating online were also shared alongside similar claims here, here and here.
But they do not show the impact of the Israeli air strike on Iran in October 2024.
Refinery explosion
A reverse image search and subsequent keyword searches on Google found the falsely shared photos were taken by AFP photographer Atta Kenare and Vahid Ahmadi, a photographer for Iran’s Tasnim news agency, on June 2, 2021.
Both photos are available in AFP’s archives, and their captions state the images show a blaze that broke out at a refinery in southern Tehran.
Below are screenshot comparisons of the falsely shared photos used in the Chinese articles (left) and the photos as seen in AFP’s archives (right):
The fire started after a leak from an emergency liquified gas line triggered an explosion, the head of Tehran’s crisis team told state television (archived link).
An AFP correspondent said the flames and thick clouds of black smoke could be seen reaching high into the sky from across Tehran more than an hour after the blaze started on the evening of June 2, 2021.
A spokesman for the Tehran Oil Refinery Company dismissed “all speculation centring on sabotage at the refinery”, according to state television.
“The accident was caused by a technical problem and we are currently in the process of controlling the fire,” the spokesman added.
AFP has debunked other false claims related to the conflict in the Middle East here.
