Fact-check: Have Turkey and Iran declared war on Israel?

A video allegedly showing Turkey moving a warship toward Gaza to defend Palestinians from Israeli strikes has been shared widely on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, over the past few days. 

"Turkey moved a warship towards Gaza as they said they would defend Gaza against Israel as tensions increase in the Middle East. This is getting interesting," tweeted one account.

The claim comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on 25 October that Hamas was not a terrorist organisation and cancelled a planned trip to Israel, exacerbating already existing tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem. 

By doing a reverse image search, we found the video is miscaptioned. The original video was posted on YouTube about ten years ago.

It shows an unmanned US combat aerial vehicle conducting a flight and landing test on a warship.

In the misleading video, a CNN logo was added to dupe social media users into believing it is a legitimate news report.

For the audio, we found it was also pulled from a real news report by WION, an Indian-Engish language news channel, with some key details edited. 

In a statement, the Turkish Presidency’s Directorate of Communications also denied the allegations presented in the fake news report.

"The allegation made by various social media posts through footage showing a ‘Turkish warship en route to Palestine’ is untrue,” wrote a spokesperson for the government. 

The second viral claim we’ve seen widely shared on X is that Iran has also declared war on Israel.

Many shared images of a black flag flying over the gold dome of Iran’s Imam Reza shrine – a holy site for Shiite Muslims located in the northeast of the country.

"This is a call for war or vengeance," said one blue-tick X user, known for spreading