Fact Check: Clip shows video game simulation, not US warplane downed in Iran

A widely viewed clip has been claimed to show an American warplane that US media reported had gone down over Iran on April 3, 2026, after Iranian media aired footage of aircraft wreckage.

But the video was first posted February 28 — the day US-Israeli strikes on Tehran plunged the Middle East into war — by social media channels that described it as footage from military simulation gameplay.

“BREAKING The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) announce the downing of an American F-15 fighter jet on Qeshm Island,” says an April 3 post on X.

The post includes video of a US fighter jet’s futile attempt to avoid a missile, with a pilot ejecting via parachute at the clip’s end.

The video, which comes from an account AFP has previously fact-checked for pushing other disinformation about the war in the Middle East, quickly racked up tens of thousands of interactions.

It also spread in other languages on Facebook as US media outlets including Axios reported April 3 that US forces had rescued one of the two crew members of a warplane that Iranian media said was downed by the Islamic republic’s air defence systems.

Iranian authorities separately deployed troops and offered a bounty as it launched a hunt for the crew, while also urging people living in the rugged southwest of the country to assist with the search.

The incident marked the first report of a US fighter jet downed in Iranian territory since US-Israeli strikes killed the Islamic republic’s supreme leader on February 28, triggering a wave of retaliatory attacks that have enveloped the Gulf region.

But the clip shared on X is unrelated. It originated with a video game, as evidenced by the artificial appearance of the trees and the English voice effects.

Reverse image searches surfaced the same clip posted February 28 on Instagram by a self-described “gaming video creator” whose account bio reads: “All scenes shown are from a digital flight simulator. No real aircraft or weapons involved”

Additional keyword searches uncovered an earlier version of the video published to YouTube by “@IgniteFluxYT,” a channel that describes itself as “your destination for thrilling military simulation gameplay”

“Join us for realistic action, cinematic moments, and epic simulation experiences,” the channel’s page description reads, adding that “all videos on this channel are created and owned by Ignite Flux.”

A caption attached to the video further clarifies that the clip is a “simulation” and includes the hashtag “#flightsim.”

The YouTube clip’s title identifies the computer-generated aircraft as a depiction of an “F/A-18 Hornet”. According to April 3 reports from The New York Times and CBS, however, the plane downed over Iran was an F-15E fighter jet.

AFP previously debunked false claims about a similar clip.