Iran appears to spread misinformation to justify attacks on Erbil

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian media appears to have spread disinformation, including doctored footage, to justify its deadly attack on Erbil last week. 

Last Monday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired ten ballistic missiles toward Erbil under the pretext of targeting the “spy headquarters” of anti-Iran groups. The strike killed Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee and three other people. Dizayee’s mansion, destroyed in the attack, was described by Tehran as a Mossad base - a claim strongly denied by Kurdish and Iraqi officials. 

Iranian media has published several photos in a bid to justify Tehran’s missile attack on Erbil, which was internationally condemned. 

Erbil-based journalist Wladimir van Wilgenburg was the first to provide the original photos, showing that those published in Iranian media had been doctored. The information has since been verified by Rudaw, concluding that the photos appear to have been altered. 

One of the photos shared by Press TV on Friday claims that Dizayee is standing next to an Israeli agent along with a group of Kurdish fighters affiliated with an Iranian-Kurdish political party.  

Rudaw found the original photo which does not include Dizayee. 

Rudaw's graphic experts examined the photographs and found distortions in the lighting and pixilation and they concluded that the images were doctored.

Another photo shared by Press TV claims that Dizayee posed for a photo with a “Zionist Rabbi” at an event. 

However, the original photo shows that a different person was in fact posing with the rabbi. 

Pro-Iran social media accounts shared a graphic photo purportedly showing an Israeli opposition leader saying the Israeli prime minister should acknowledge that they lost “effective and active” members in the Erbil attack. The graphic used Al-Jazeera channel’s template, however, the Arabic outlet never published such a graphic. 

In a video published with Arabic subtitles, the translation claims that an unidentified guest of an Israeli TV station says Mossad is present in northern Iraq, but in fact the presenter and her guest were speaking about laser eye surgery, and not the Kurdistan Region.

Updated on January 22, 2023 at 9:09am