Video doesn’t show Israelis panicking after Iran’s attack. They’re music fans in Argentina.

After Iran launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles toward Israel late on April 13, some social media accounts circulated a video that they claimed showed dozens of people running and screaming in response to the attack. 

"Footage reportedly showing Israelis panicking after Iranian attacks reach #Israel," read an April 13 Instagram video’s caption.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

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PolitiFact reverse-image searched a frame of the video and found it appeared on other social media platforms, including X on April 13. The X post was tagged with a Community Note that read, "This is footage from outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina."

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on April 14, 2024 in a post

“Not even one rocket (from Iran) hit Israel.”

We verified the footage’s location by cross-checking the video with satellite imagery. We identified features in the video that matched features outside the Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires shown in the satellite image, such as surrounding buildings and the traffic light. The colors of the boxes show how they match up.

The green box shows the Four Seasons hotel. The red, yellow and blue boxes show the buildings surrounding it, and the orange box shows the traffic light captured in the video. The crosswalks are also visible on both videos.

(Screenshots from Google Earth, Instagram; exposure was turned up on Instagram screenshots to make features clearer.)

BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh posted on X that the video showed fans of pop star Louis Tomlinson, a former member of the disbanded English-Irish boy band One Direction. We couldn’t find the original video, but Tomlinson’s official TikTok account posted a video April 7 captioned, "Meeting fans in Buenos Aires, Argentina." 

An Israeli air base in the Negev desert was damaged, nearly all missiles and drones launched by Iran were intercepted by Israel’s defensive weapons systems and by its allies. A 7-year-old girl sustained the only critical injury reported so far.

The video doesn’t show "Israelis panicking" after Iran’s direct attack on Israel. We rate that claim False.