New Delhi: The war between the United States and Iran is being fought on more than battlefields and around the Strait of Hormuz. A parallel information war is playing out online, where unverified claims are crossing borders.
Senator Rick Scott of Florida also reposted the claim, while Fox News reported on it. A fabricated quote attributed to Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Ahmad Vahidi began with an obscure social media post and soon spread through Israeli and American political circles. The claim was eventually cited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and shared by Mike Waltz, the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations. There was no evidence that he had made the statement. There was also no proof in the post that Iran had built a nuclear weapon. But the claim travelled. Yair Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s son and a political commentator, then amplified the claim. In a speech at Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery in Jerusalem, the prime minister referred to the alleged statement as evidence of Iran’s intentions. The New York Times traced the path of the allegation and found no evidence that Vahidi had made the statement. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is intended for civilian purposes. The programme has been the subject of international debate for around three decades and continues to be cited by US President Donald Trump as one of the reasons for his campaign against Tehran.
It suggested that Vahidi had said Iran would never give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons as long as Israel and the United States possessed their own.
