2025 clip of Jordan power station fire falsely linked to ongoing Middle East war
- Published on July 27, 2026 at 16:11
- 2 min read
- By Chayanit ITTHIPONGMAETEE, Tendai DUBE, AFP Thailand, AFP South Africa
After Kuwait announced that an Iranian strike had hit a power and water distillation plant in July 2026, a video circulated on social media with claims it showed the aftermath of the attack. But this is false; the footage predates the strike by nearly a year, to a fire at an electrical transformer station in Jordan.
“BREAKING: Iran reportedly struck Kuwait's Al-Subiya Power Station and Water Desalination Plant, one of the country's most critical energy and freshwater facilities,” reads a Facebook reel published on July 19, 2026, by a Nigerian-based account.
The 23-second clip shows flames and thick smoke pluming from a fenced facility.
Similar posts circulated in Thai and Arabic. Israeli broadcaster i24 also shared the video on social media.
These posts appeared after Kuwait said Iran had struck a power and water plant that resulted in a fire on July 19, as Bahrain also accused Tehran of targeting civilian sites (archived here).
"As a result of the heinous Iranian aggression on Kuwait, a power and water distillation plant, for the second time in two days, has been subjected to an attack that caused a fire in some facilities of the station," Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a statement.
Kuwait has urged residents to reduce electricity usage as repeated Iranian attacks strain its power network.
Both Kuwait and Bahrain, which host US military installations including the US Fifth Fleet, have borne the brunt of Iranian strikes on Gulf neighbours since hostilities resumed in July despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran (archived here).
US Central Command said two service members were killed on July 17 defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks, with another still missing.
However, the video is unrelated to the Iranian strike on Kuwait.
2025 Jordan fire
A reverse image search of the video's keyframes led to a longer version of the same clip published by Jordanian news outlet Amman Net on August 12, 2025, with an Arabic-language caption describing firefighting efforts to extinguish a fire at an electrical transformer in the Al-Subaihi area (archived here).
Media outlets also published the same clip, while others shared different footage of the same fire (archived here, here and here).
According to Jordanian news agency Petra, the fire broke out at the Al-Subaihi transformer station in the Al-Balqa region of northwestern Jordan, where firefighting teams successfully extinguished the blaze. No injuries or casualties were reported (archived here).
Jordan's National Electric Power Company announced that the station had been returned to service within an hour of the fire breaking out (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked other misinformation linked to the Middle East war.
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