Amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia, a video showing former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad interacting with people in a public setting is being shared on social media, with users claiming that the former president is alive.
Some context: Following the death of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other top leaders in targetted US-Israel strikes, reports emerged of Ahmadinejad's death as well. However, Iran has made no official statements regarding the same.
What we found: At first, we divided the viral clip into multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
It led us to the same video uploaded on a YouTube channel called 'Mehrefarda' on 15 February, which predates the US–Israel attack on Iran.
The video's desciption was written in Persian and loosely translated to in English as, "Dr Ahmadinejad's presence at the funeral and burial ceremony of Dr. Seyyed Hassan Mousavi's mother. Savadkouh Camp / January 18, 2021. This video has now been published due to an internet outage during the ceremony."
We also found the same video on a page on Instagram from 15 February.
As per a report by Iran International from 3 March, it noted that Ahmadinejad was alive following an assassination attempt. h
Additionally, the Jerusalem Post reported on 1 March that Ahmadinejad was killed in Israeli-US airstrikes which allegedly hit his residence in Narnak.
Conclusion: The viral clip was traced back to 15 February, predating the escalations between Iran-Israel-USA.
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