While 18 American soldiers have been killed since the start of the conflict between Iran to the United States and Israel, the Iranian Embassy in South Africa relayed Thursday August 6 on its account X a particularly poignant video. It shows a very young boy at the funeral of his father, an American soldier who died during the war in Iran. The child walks towards his father’s coffin covered with the American flag and breaks down crying as his mother takes him in her arms. In the background, soldiers render the military salute in honor of the deceased.
On August 6, 2026, the Iranian embassy in South Africa relayed an AI-generated video of the supposed funeral of an American soldier. Source X.
“Tell this child that his father was sent to kill innocent people, while the person who killed him was only defending himself, his family, his people and his homeland,” wrote the Iranian embassy in South Africa in a post seen more than 390,000 times on X. The post was also shared by the Iranian embassy in Prague.
A right hand that disappears then reappears
This video is, however, fake: it indeed presents several defects characteristic of an AI-generated video.
The Iranian embassy in South Africa shared a fairly blurred video, possibly on purpose, to prevent analysis of anomalies in its details. But a reverse image search (see here how to proceed) allows you to find a higher resolution version of the videopublished on April 13, 2026 on Instagram.
In this more readable video, at the fourth second, we realize that the crying boy has no right hand. This appears at the fifth second when the child raises his arm and then disappears again when he lowers it. This is a defect that betrays the work of an AI, as artificial intelligences sometimes still have problems correctly generating human anatomy.
In a higher quality version of the video, published on April 13, 2026, we see that the child does not have a right hand. ©
A military salute with the wrong hand
Another flaw in the video is visible in the background. We see soldiers in ranks performing a military salute in honor of the deceased.
Zoom in on the background of the video published by the Iranian embassy in South Africa on August 6, 2026. The soldiers visible in the image perform an unregulated military salute. © Instagram
However, nothing is right in the salute that the soldiers perform: the soldiers greet the deceased with their left hand then end their salute by stopping their hand vertically in front of their face, which makes no sense.
According to a manual of US Department of Defense which describes the rules of military salute in force in the army, navy and air force, the regulatory salute must in fact be carried out with “the right hand”, except in cases of physical impossibility.
The military salute described in a US Department of Defense manual published in 2014. © US Department of Defense
The raising of the right hand must stop “above and slightly to the right of the eye”, that is to say horizontally and on the right side of the face as described in an illustration in the manual, and absolutely not in front of the face as in the video shared by the Iranian embassy.
As the editorial staff of the Observers was able to observe during a previous investigationIranian diplomacy regularly shares propaganda against the United States through artificial intelligence-generated videos, sometimes directly produced by groups linked to the Iranian regime.
Also readPropaganda war: The Gen Z team behind Iran’s hit anti-Trump videos
The video shared by the Iranian embassy in South Africa appears to have been taken from accounts broadcasting, probably for monetization purposes, very viral videos showing children crying during the funerals of American soldiers (like here And there).
