Old Video Of Explosion In China Shared As Iran's Nuclear Attack On Israel

A 2015 footage of chemical blast at a warehouse in Tianjin, China is viral on social media with claims falsely depicting it as a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel, during the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict.

On June 13, Israel launched large-scale strikes against Iran, claiming to have targeted missile factories, nuclear facilities, and killing senior Iranian military commanders, leading to retaliatory strikes by Iran, some of which have successfully penetrated Israeli air defence systems. At least 224 people have been killed in Iran and 24 in Israel, since the countries resumed hostile attacks.

Claim:

A footage showing a massive explosion was shared on X (archived here) with the caption, "This looks like Nuclear Attack on Israel. Did Iran 🇮🇷 just dropped nuke at Israel 🇮🇱 This is craziest ever."

Several other users also shared the exact same video and caption together on X (here and here).

What we found:

The footage shows a series of massive explosions that happened in China's Tianjin port in 2015 and is unrelated to ongoing Iran-Israel conflict.

Chemical explosion in Tianjin port: Reverse image search on keyframes of the video led us to several social media posts and news reports about a chemical explosion that happened in a warehouse at Tianjin port in China in August 2015 and killed at least 173 people. Footage shared by many users of the explosion matched the viral video.

Footage frequently shared out of context: The same video has gone viral multiple times during past conflicts with false contexts, and has been fact-checked by BOOM (here and here).