Image of pink missile linked to Iran is AI-generated
- Published on April 20, 2026 at 16:08
- 3 min read
- By Samad UTHMAN, AFP Nigeria
A two-week ceasefire in the Middle East continues to hold as the United States enforces a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. A day before the temporary truce, social media posts circulated an image of a pink missile, claiming it was made in response to a request from an Iranian girl who asked for it to be fired at Israel. But this is false; the image was created using artificial intelligence (AI).
“A little girl had asked for a pink missile to be launched at Tel Aviv. This is the result: ‘Bespoke missiles’,” reads the caption of a post on X, published on the official account of the Iranian embassy in South Africa on April 6, 2026.
Shared more than 2,000 times, the post features an image of a pink missile with an inscription in Farsi. Translated into English, it reads: “In response to the request of a revolutionary girl.”
A similar post shared on Facebook reads: "An Iranian girl asked the IRGC to "strike Israel with a pink missile" They made her wish come true...(sic)."
The claim was also shared elsewhere on X in Arabic.
Iran has been locked in a wider Middle East conflict with the US and Israel, with a second two-week ceasefire announced on April 7, 2026, following an earlier truce that quickly collapsed (archived here).
On April 12, peace talks held in Pakistan ended without an agreement. The following day, US forces began blockading Iranian ports in a bid to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route (archiving here).
But the image of the pink missile is not real.
Fabricated image
The tightly cropped nature of the image makes it difficult to determine scale relative to the background, but a closer look at the mechanics of the purported missile reveals inconsistencies.
South African conflict analyst Darren Olivier told AFP Fact Check that the wiring below the inscription lacks a clear mechanical purpose.
“The specific structure of the missile, its fairings, and attachments does not match any Iranian missile that I’m aware of,” Olivier said. “In particular, the wiring is not like the connectors seen on any known ballistic missiles, Iranian or otherwise, and does not appear to follow a logical path, a failure which is a common feature of AI-generated imagery.”
AFP Fact Check ran the image through multiple AI detection tools.
Hive Moderation found a 99.1 percent probability that the image is AI-generated.
VeraAI returned a result of 85 percent.
Google’s SynthID AI detector confirmed that the image was artificially generated using one of the company’s AI platforms.
While the purported pink Iranian missile is not real, a real pink missile does exist. Ukraine's Fire Point defence company unveiled the FP-5 "Flamingo" in August 2025, with early versions having a pink warhead, reportedly a nod to the women running production (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked a similar claim on an Iranian missile dedicated to the victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Read more of our fact-checking work on the Middle East war here.
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