Does this video depict the regrouping and redeployment of the Iranian army towards their western border in response to the Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: The footage of the Iranian military moving heavy equipment primarily consists of old material, mainly from an Iranian military exercise in September 2022, and does not represent current events related to the Hamas-Israel conflict.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @nikolaynikolov257 on October 27, 2023.
The Bulgarian text overlay, translated into English by Lead Stories staff, reads:
The Iranian army has started redeploying and regrouping towards its western border!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Nov 6 06:55:11 2023 UTC)
The inclusion of outdated footage showing the movement of Iranian military equipment, unrelated to current events, suggests an attempt to falsely connect it to the instability caused by the Hamas-Israel conflict. In late October 2023, a planned two-day military exercise did take place in Iran, but it occurred in the central part of the country, not towards the western border as claimed in the video. Additionally, the footage in the TikTok video does not align with the scenes from the October 2023 exercise.
A Google reverse image search (archived here) conducted by Lead Stories staff on November 6, 2023, reinforces the argument that the TikTok video is not capturing current events. Instead, it aligns with footage from multiple videos showcasing the Iranian military exercise "Eghtedar 1401," carried out in September 2022. This substantiates the conclusion that the video presents recycled content from a past military exercise rather than portraying developments in October 2023.
Portions of the TikTok video footage align with a report dated September 6, 2022, from "Iran Press," featuring content from the military exercise 'Eghtedar 1401.' Another segment corresponding to the claim is evident in a video uploaded on YouTube on September 10, 2022.
The remaining scenes of the purported movement of Iranian military equipment are present in footage shared on April 18, 2023, on a video content-sharing platform. This content, translated from Persian to English with Google Chrome, can be seen here.
