Research shows the video is AI-generated.
This Facebook post with a video claiming to show a pro-government march in Tehran, Iran, against America in 2026 is PARTLY FALSE.
The post reads, “Million March in the streets of Tehran in solidarity With Government and against rioters and America.”
On 12 January 2026, the media reported that tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators had rallied in Tehran as the Iranian regime sought to downplay the continuing nationwide protest movement.
On 13 January 2026, some Iranians rallied behind the country’s leadership by demonstrating on the streets across the country to condemn alleged ‘foreign-backed’ ‘riots’ and ‘terrorism’.”
Since December 2025, anti-government protests have spread across Iran, with demonstrations in Tehran and over 100 cities, against economic hardship and political repression. Reports show the protests were met with a security crackdown, arrests, and deaths.
However, a close examination of the claim video suggests it is AI-generated, as the crowd looks unnaturally uniform, details are blurred, flags appear overly perfect, and the perspective does not align naturally with the surrounding buildings.
A Google Lens reverse image search on a keyframe from the video led to a similar clip on social media. No credible media has published it.
Additionally, PesaCheck ran the image on a machine-generated content detection tool, Hive Moderation, and found that the photo is 93.6 per cent likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a video claiming to show a pro-government march held in Tehran, Iran, against America and finds it to be PARTLY FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Bekalu Kibro and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor, Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/ sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
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PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.