What was claimed
Images show US soldiers captured in Iran.
Our verdict
These images are fake. They contain Gemini AI, and SynthID invisible watermarks and visual inconsistencies which mean they are almost certainly AI-generated.
Viral images of ‘US soldiers captured in Iran’ are AI-generated
Viral images on social media claimed to show US soldiers from the elite Delta Force unit “captured by Iran” are fake.
The three pictures, which have been shared on Facebook and X, depict men in combat fatigues being escorted by masked soldiers, and kneeling near a picture of the former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian flags.
Captions shared with the images say “US terrorist are now in safe hands 🫵🏽🤣 Delta Force operation fails! Many US soldiers captured by Iran”. Delta Force is an elite US special forces unit.
But the images used to support this claim are fake, and AI-generated.
Uncropped versions of the images include a distinctive diamond in the corner, the watermark of Google’s Gemini AI chatbot.
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When we ran the images through Google’s SynthID detector, it reported that all three also contained an invisible SynthID digital watermark which can be used to identify content which has been created or edited with Google’s AI tools.
That along with visual inconsistencies in the images (such as a date on one reading that it was taken on ‘2026/04/18’, a date which hadn’t occurred at the time the images were posted) show the pictures are AI-generated.
The US has not yet committed to sending ground troops in its joint offensive with Israel against Iran.
We have been debunking misinformation circulating on social media since the outbreak of the current conflict in the Middle East, including AI content. It’s important to consider whether what you are seeing comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source before sharing.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because these images are fake, and there are no credible reports of US soldiers being captured in Iran.