On 13 June 2025, Israel launched attacks on more than a dozen targets across Iran under the codename Operation Rising Lion, with the stated objective of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel reportedly damaged key nuclear facilities and military installations, killing several of Iran’s top military leaders. In retaliation, Iran launched a series of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel under the name Operation True Promise 3.
In this context, a video allegedly showing an Iranian missile strike causing destruction at the Israeli Defence Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv is being widely shared on social media. Some users are also claiming that the video shows a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel. The footage features massive explosions near high-rise buildings, with flames and smoke rising into the sky. We will fact-check this claim in this article.
Claim: Video shows Iranian missiles attacking the Israeli Defence Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Fact: The video shows an explosion that occurred in a warehouse in 2015 in Tianjin, China. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the claim, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and ran a reverse image search online. This led us to a video published on BBC News’ official YouTube channel on 14 August 2015, titled “Tianjin explosion video captures fear of eyewitnesses.” This is a longer version of the viral video. As per the description of this video, it shows two massive blasts that took place in the Chinese city of Tianjin.
An additional search led us to a few news reports(here, here, and here) on this incident, published in 2015. As per these reports, two huge explosions have occurred in ‘the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 50 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials.’ The blast reportedly occurred at a warehouse of Ruihai International Logistics.
A report by The Guardian, published on 12 September 2015, states that the explosions occurred at the Ruihai International Logistics warehouses and resulted in 173 deaths, marking one of the deadliest industrial accidents in China’s recent history. We also found the same video uploaded by Hong Kong Free Press on 16 August 2015, titled “Tianjin Explosion: Another View.”
Additionally, as per a news report published by The Economic Times on 14 June 2025, Iran claimed that it had hit the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. We also found a few news reports that said (here, here, and here) Israel has targeted Iran’s Defense Ministry headquarters in Tehran.
Further, we found news reports dated 17 June 2025, in which Iran claimed(here, here, and here) to have struck the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, in Tel Aviv — a claim that was reportedly denied by Israeli authorities. However, we could not independently verify these claims made by both sides.
To sum up, the viral video does not show a nuclear strike by Iran on Israel. It is a recycled clip from the 2015 Tianjin explosion in China, now being falsely linked to the June 2025 Iran-Israel conflict
