SerpApi.Org
After Kuwait announced that an Iranian strike had hit a power and water distillation plant in July 2026, a video has circulated on social media with a false claim it showed the aftermath of the attack. But this footage predates the strike by nearly a year. Reverse image searches traced the same footage to a fire at an electrical transformer station in Jordan in August 2025.
"Iran attacked a power station in Kuwait. There have been several explosions in Kuwait, while the fire still burns relentlessly at the Al-Subiya power station after Iran's missiles," reads a Thai-language Facebook post published on July 20, 2026.
The post shares an 18-second clip showing flames and thick smoke pluming from a fenced facility.
Other posts sharing the same video and claim also appeared in English and Arabic . Israeli broadcaster i24 also falsely shared the video on social media.
These posts appeared after Kuwait said Iran had struck a power and water plant that resulted in a fire on July 19, as Bahrain also accused Tehran of targeting civilian sites ( archived link ).
"As a result of the heinous Iranian aggression on Kuwait, a power and water distillation plant, for the second time in two days, has been subjected to an attack that caused a fire in some facilities of the station," Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a statement.
Kuwait has urged residents to reduce electricity usage as repeated Iranian attacks strain its power network.
Both Kuwait and Bahrain, which host US military installations including the US Fifth Fleet, have borne the brunt of Iranian strikes on Gulf neighbours since hostilities resumed in July despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran ( archived link ).
US Central Command said two service members were killed on July 17 defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks, with another still missing.
However, the video is unrelated to the Iranian strike on Kuwait.
2025 Jordan fire
A reverse image search using the video's keyframes led to a longer version of the same clip published by Jordanian news outlet Amman Net on August 12, 2025, with an Arabic-language caption describing firefighting efforts to extinguish a fire at an electrical transformer in the Al-Subaihi area ( archived link ).
Media outlets have also published the same clip , while others shared different footage of the same fire (archived here , here and here ).
According to Jordanian news agency Petra , the fire broke out at the Al-Subaihi transformer station in the Al-Balqa region of northwestern Jordan, where firefighting teams successfully extinguished the blaze ( archived link ). No injuries or casualties were reported.
Jordan's National Electric Power Company announced that the station had been returned to service within an hour of the fire breaking out ( archived link ).
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation linked to the Middle East war .
