Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s defiant speech at the UN General Assembly, where he held up photos of schoolchildren killed during the early days of the Iran war, has triggered the spread of an AI-generated picture falsely passed off online as genuine. The circulating image replaced the children’s photo with a synthetic visual. It also falsely depicted Pezeshkian holding a pink school bag — a symbol previously used to honour the children — despite him not doing so during his speech.
“Pezeshkian stuns the UN General Assembly with questions on the Minab tragedy and Gaza humanitarian crisis,” reads part of a lengthy Facebook post shared on September 24, 2026.
The attached image shows Pezeshkian standing behind a lectern bearing the UN logo while holding up a photo of children standing in front of rubble in his right hand and a pink school bag in the other.
Superimposed text on the image reads “Minab school tragedy. Were these children terrorists in the eyes of Israel.”
The Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran’s southern city of Minab was hit in February at the start of the US-Israel war with Iran ( archived link). At least 155 people were killed, most of them children.
Iran says the attack involved two separate US Tomahawk missiles but neither the United States nor Israel have officially claimed responsibility for the strike.
Screenshot of the false post taken on September 25 with red X and AI symbol added by AFP
The image with similar claims was shared elsewhere on Facebook after Pezeshkian addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23.
Striking a defiant tone, the Iranian president told the assembly Tehran would never “bend at the knee” while accusing Washington of “terrorism” for assassinating former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war ( archived link).
While he held up photos of some of the children killed in the Minab school strike, they are not the ones seen in the circulating image, according to photos taken at the assembly and distributed by AFP.
Videos of the meeting distributed by AFP and posted by the UN on its YouTube channel also show Pezeshkian did not hold up a pink school bag at any point during his speech ( archived link).
Children’s backpacks have been presented before to honour the victims of the Minab blast, including by Iran’s footballers who posed with them before a match in March.
But AI-generated images of players holding up the backpack during the FIFA World Cup have also emerged in false posts that AFP have debunked.
The circulating image also contained visual inconsistencies, as the Iranian leader was also wearing a black shirt and did not wear a tie during his speech.
Photos of Pezeshkian holding up a picture of school children killed in the strike (left) and of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the UN General Assembly
A search for the “VityazCossack” watermark on the image led to a Facebook page that posted the picture on September 23, where it is labelled “AI content” ( archived link).
The page regularly shares images and pictures that are similarly labelled as made with AI ( archived link). The page’s owner did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
The Hive detection tool has flagged the circulating image as AI-generated.
Screenshot of the Hive detection tool result
AFP has debunked other false claims related to Iran.