Donald Trump, Mojtaba Khamenei, Benjamin NetanyahuA fabricated quote attributed to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander spread from an Indian X account to Israeli media and US politicians, eventually featuring in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, according to a review by The New York Times. The false claim emerged on August 5, when an anonymous account on X in India posted that Brig.
Gen. Ahmad Vahidi had said Iran would not abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions as long as Israel and the United States possessed such weapons.
There is no evidence that Vahidi made the statement, or that Iran has developed nuclear weapons. Yet the claim quickly gained traction, with Israeli accounts and media outlets repeating it before it reached senior political figures in Israel and the United States.
The episode, detailed by The New York Times, shows how an unverified social media post can acquire credibility as it is repeatedly cited by politicians, broadcasters and other accounts, even when its original source is unreliable. False quote gains traction in IsraelThe fabricated quotation was first known to have appeared on an Indian X account with around 175,000 followers.
The account has previously faced criticism from fact-checkers and Pakistan's government for allegedly spreading false and Islamophobic content, according to The New York Times. The post included a photograph of Vahidi alongside a cartoonish, AI-generated mushroom cloud.
The English text also contained spelling and grammatical errors. Around two hours later, another Indian account with about 82,000 followers shared the same claim in Hindi.
According to the Israeli fact-checking organisation Bodkim Project, that account had published another fabricated quote attributed to Vahidi a week earlier. “The regime is not preparing to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
It is buying time. There will be no deal,” the account posted.
The account is run by Gedaliah Blum, an entrepreneur who leads the Heartl and Institute, which organises tours and promotional exchanges in Israel. Blum told The New York Times that he believed the quotation came from a radio interview with Vahidi, although he could not remember the source.
He said he shared it because he believed Iran was determined to acquire a nuclear weapon, despite uncertainty over “whether those exact words were spoken.” About 30 minutes later, Israel's Channel 14 shared the quotation in English and claimed it represented the first public acknowledgement by Iran that it was pursuing a nuclear bomb.
