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Marta Campabadal Graus
By Marta Campabadal Graus August 8, 2024

This video was computer-generated, it doesn’t show a plane crashing into the Milad Tower

If Your Time is short

  • This video doesn’t show a plane crashing into a tower July 31.

  • The tower shown in the video is the Milad Tower, a communications tower in Tehran, Iran. 

  • The video is from a social media user who defines himself as a video creator. The creator confirmed the post doesn’t show a real video, he said it was computer-generated.

See the sources for this fact-check

A Facebook post shows a video of a plane seemingly crashing into a tower and exploding. The July 31 post includes texts that says "Plane crash" and "Live."

Screenshot of Facebook post from July 31, 2024. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

A reverse-image search of the Facebook video led us to an image of the Milad Tower, a communications tower in Tehran, Iran.

PolitiFact found no credible media reports of a plane crashing into Milad Tower in 2024. We also searched the Nexis news database, but found no reports of the alleged crash. We found no official statements or social media posts about such a crash.

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The name "hadi shafegh" appears at the video’s conclusion. A social media search for that name led us to the Instagram, TikTok and YouTube profiles of a user who defines himself as a "video creator." On his TikTok and YouTube pages he says he creates 3D promotional videos, visual effects and computer-generated images.

PolitiFact contacted Shafegh via Telegram. He confirmed that the publication does not show a real video, and that it’s a video he made with a computer. 

On his Instagram and TikTok accounts we found the same video of the plane crashing into a tower, posted July 13. The text accompanying the Instagram posts says in Farsi, "Milad Tower, graphic effect," according to a translation provided by Instagram.

On TikTok, Shafegh posted another video of an exploding tower with the caption, "Tower distraction part 2." That video shows a plane crashing into the tower and an up-close shot of the destruction.

Shafegh also posted other videos on his social media using computer-generated images of planes and helicopters crashing into famous landmarks, such as the Tower of Pisa in Italy or the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 

We rate the claim that a plane crashed into the Milad Tower on July 31 as False.

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This video was computer-generated, it doesn’t show a plane crashing into the Milad Tower

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