This video shows a 2025 oil tankers collision, not a 2026 US strike on Iranian cargo ship

After President Donald Trump announced the U.S. had attacked an Iranian ship trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, social media users shared a video they said showed the strike’s aftermath.

Trump said April 19 that the U.S. Navy intercepted the Iranian-flagged cargo ship Touska after it failed to heed the strait’s U.S. blockade. A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer struck Touska’s engine room and U.S. Marines seized the ship, Trump said.

Hours after Trump posted about the attack on Truth Social, one X post shared footage that showed flames shooting and smoke billowing from the center of a ship. "Attack on Iranian merchant ship in Arabian Sea violates ceasefire," the post’s caption said. 

(Screenshot from X)

A clip of that video also appeared with an April 19 Facebook post about the Touska incident that shared Trump’s Truth Social post about the attack.

But using reverse-image search, we found the footage doesn’t show the U.S. strike on Touska. It’s an old video unrelated to the current Iran war.

It was filmed in June 2025 and showed the aftermath of a collision of two oil tankers, Adalynn and Front Eagle, near the Strait of Hormuz. During that time, Iran and Israel were engaged in conflict, affecting navigation systems.

That video has been misrepresented to make other claims. In March, it was used to claim it showed a U.S. oil tanker struck by Iran. A few weeks later, fact-checkers in Africa noticed other posts falsely saying it showed a Liberian-flagged vessel in an Iranian attack. 

The U.S. Central Command has uploaded footage of the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance intercepting the Touska.

This video doesn’t show the United States’ strike on an Iranian cargo ship. We rate that claim False.