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 (here, here, and here) is being shared on social media claiming to show Israeli citizens fleeing the country amid Iranian retaliation. This video includes three different clips stitched together, presented with the caption suggesting a mass exodus from Israel. The video shows large crowds walking through mountainous terrain, through roads, and over a bridge. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The video shows Israelis fleeing their country in fear following Iranian attacks after Operation Rising Lion.
Fact: The visuals in the viral video predate and are unrelated to the current Iran-Israel conflict that began on 13 June 2025. It includes old clips showing Nepalese harvesting Yarsagumba in the Dolpa region and Russian Orthodox Christians participating in the Velikoretsky religious procession in Russia. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the claim, we broke down the viral video into its three distinct clips.
First – The clip on top
Through reverse image search on a few keyframes from the first clip, appearing at the top of the viral video, we found an Instagram post containing an uncropped version of this clip, uploaded on 2 June 2025, over ten days before the Israel-Iran conflict began. Based on the caption of the post, the video shows crowds in Nepal’s Dolpa region harvesting Yarsagumba, a rare medicinal fungus, also known as ‘Himalayan Gold.’
A screenshot from this video was earlier posted by the Instagram page “Routine of Nepal Banda” with credit to ‘Nedo Soch,’ which uploaded the videos related to this harvest on their handles named ‘Nedo Yatri Soch.’ They posted this video on TikTok on 29 May 2025 with a caption that reads ‘Rup Partan Dolpa District of Nepal 🇳🇵#time #shorts #nedoyatri #nedosoch #dolpa #fyp #tiktok #420’.
Second & Third – Clips at the bottom
Further reverse image search on the keyframes from the other two clips in the video, placed at the bottom half, led us to an ‘X’ post from 6 June 2025 containing them. This post also predates the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict. Based on the caption of this post, the video shows large groups of people taking part in the Velikoretsky procession, a centuries-old annual pilgrimage by Russian Orthodox Christians.
These clips were posted on Telegram (here and here) around 4–6 June 2025 and filmed in the Russian city of Kirov. You can find a few YouTube videos related to this procession here, here, and here
Although we could not independently verify the locations of all three clips, their presence on the internet well before the 13 June 2025 Iran-Israel conflict confirms that they are unrelated to it.
To sum up, the viral video claiming to show Israelis fleeing amid Iranian attacks actually features unrelated visuals that were uploaded online days before the current conflict began.
