Old video misrepresented as Iranian ambassador expelled from Lebanon
- Published on April 9, 2026 at 04:57
- 2 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa
- Translation and adaptation AFP Indonesia
After Lebanon ordered Iran's ambassador to leave the country, a clip circulated on social media with a false claim it showed him being dragged to a car. The video was in fact filmed in 2022 and depicts a man taken into custody after reportedly insulting Michel Aoun, Lebanon's president at the time.
"Iranian ambassador was dragged and expelled from Beirut, Lebanon," reads part of the Indonesian-language Facebook post shared on March 30, 2026.
It goes on to say that Hezbollah, a Tehran-backed militant group, has created chaos by turning Lebanon into a battleground after the group took part in the ongoing Iran war.
The attached video, which has garnered more than 300 likes, shows a man being dragged and surrounded by security officers with several troops surrounding him. It was also shared on Instagram and TikTok.
The false claim surfaced after Lebanon said on March 24 it had withdrawn the accreditation of Iran's ambassador, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, and ordered him to leave the country (archived link).
Hezbollah has called the decision a "sin" and demanded the authorities "immediately reverse" the move (archived link).
An Iranian diplomatic source told AFP on March 29 that the ambassador would not leave the country despite being declared persona non grata (archived link).
Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East conflict when the Tehran-backed armed group fired rockets at Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic (archived link).
However, the circulating footage of a man being dragged by security officers is unrelated to the Iranian ambassador.
Unrelated video
Through reverse image searches using keyframes of the false video extracted with the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, AFP found a video posted by Lebanese TV channel Al Jadeed News on X on May 15, 2022, showing the same scene (archived link).
The caption identifies the man in the video as a citizen who was arrested for insulting the Lebanese president.
Further keyword searches on the incident found the Lebanese Center for Human Rights documented the video in a report on the 2022 Lebanese general elections, saying Aoun's guards "attacked and dragged away" him for insulting the president (archived link). It also contains a link to a video showing the same scene.
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation related to the war in the Middle East here.
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