...
By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Claims that the U.S. has bombed drawings of Iranian fighter jets have gone viral on social media, prompting speculation about whether Operation Epic Fury is wasting expensive weapons on ghost targets.
A post on X showed video of bombs being dropped onto an airfield with the message, “the US has been bombing drawings of F-14s this entire time lol.”
...
Read More on News
The Claim
While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has touted American military might during his Pentagon briefings including that the U.S. was raining down “death and destruction from the skies all day long," a post on social media appeared to counter and even mock that claim.
“The Iranians put their jets underground before the war began,” said the post by X account Korobochka next to an 11-second clip of a bomb being dropped on what appeared to be an outline of an aircraft. “Trump thought he destroyed the entire Iranian air force,” the post added, “it's a literally drawing. I can't believe it.”
The Facts
As of Thursday morning, Korobochka’s post, had garnered 10 million views. Its claims were amplified by X’s AI assistant Grok which said that the video showed U.S./Israeli strikes on painted 2D decoy F-14 silhouettes at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, rather than real jets.
The Grok post, which itself has received over 450,000 views, added that Iran routinely uses these low-tech fakes to draw fire and that their operational F-14s had been moved to underground bases beforehand. “Trump claimed major air force hits overall, but this specific footage matches decoy tactics per Iranian reports and visual analysis,” the Grok post added.
The video matches a clip posted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on June 16, 2025, of infrared targeting camera footage of a pair of F-14A Tomcat fighters outside aircraft shelters at the Mehrabad airport.
The F-14, a long-retired type in the U.S. Navy, is in limited service with the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF). The IDF announced “a strike on two F-14 fighter jets that were located at an airport in Tehran,” adding “these jets were intended to intercept Israeli aircraft.” At the time, Iran dismissed the claim, saying the destroyed aircraft were only mockups.
The X account Babak Taghvaee, a defense and security analyst, shared the same footage on June 16, 2025, adding that it showed strikes against “full-scale mock-ups," which are commonly deployed across tactical fighter bases of the Iranian Air Force.
The Verdict
False.
Accounts diverge whether or not the strikes shown in the clip that went viral this week were of decoy or genuine Iranian aircraft. While there are competing accounts over the alleged real or fake aircraft, the footage purporting to be of U.S. strikes on Iran this week seems to actually show an Israeli strike that is in fact at least months old—from June 16 last year during the 12-Day War.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines