Massive crowds gathered in Tehran in early July to mourn Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes that sparked a regional war in late February. However, a clip circulating online that purports to show the ceremony is fabricated — the footage does not match authentic visuals of the Iranian capital, and detection software indicates it was\u00a0 generated using AI.<\/p>\n
“Approximately 40 million people participated in the funeral ceremony of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in Tehran — not including various cities across the country,” reads an X post<\/a> published July 5, 2026.<\/p>\n The post shares a 33-second video showing aerial footage of people gathering at a large religious complex. The crowd, dressed in black, fills the streets around the site while carrying Arabic-language signs and Iranian flags.<\/p>\n Screenshot of an X post sharing the AI-generated video taken on July 9, 2026, with an AI symbol added by AFP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Other posts sharing the same video circulated with similar claims in\u00a0 Thai<\/a>, English<\/a>, Sindhi<\/a> and Arabic<\/a>, with one clip accumulating more than 20,000 views.<\/p>\n The footage spread as crowds amassed <\/a>in Tehran for s ix days of public funeral ceremonies for Khamenei starting from July 4, including a dedicated day in neighbouring Iraq ( archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n Mourners thronged the Grand Mosalla religious complex in the Iranian capital, where his body lay in state alongside the coffins of four other family members also killed in US-Israeli strikes on February 28.<\/p>\n This video shared online, however, contains multiple visual inconsistencies and elements that do not match authentic photos of the Grand Mosalla.<\/p>\n The clip itself depicts the same structure in different ways across several cuts.<\/p>\n In one shot, only two minarets are visible in the complex — but seconds later, the structure features a green-roofed building and four additional minarets.<\/p>\nAI-generated video<\/h2>\n