Following US and Israeli attacks on Iran, a video circulating on social media claims to show Senate Opposition Leader Allama Raja Nasir Abbas alleging that the United States used Pakistan’s airspace to launch strikes on Iran during a television talk show.
The claim is incorrect. The senator made no such remarks during the programme.
Claim
On March 3, a user on X shared an 18 second clip showing opposition politician Allama Raja Nasir Abbas being interviewed on a private news channel.
The post was captioned: “Pakistan is giving its airspace to the US and Israel to attack Iran. Listen to this Shia leader.”
In the video, Abbas appears to say: “I have spoken to my army’s top leadership several times, but still our military allowed the United States to use our airspace. This is very wrong, very shameful. Whatever is happening in Iran, the responsibility for that falls on Pakistan’s army.”
At the time of writing, the post had received more than 46,000 views.
Fact
Allama Raja Nasir Abbas did not make any comments about Pakistan’s airspace being used by the United States during the interview. In fact, the programme aired in 2024, well before US and Israeli attacks on Iran in February this year.
The clip circulating online was taken from an interview Abbas gave on July 27, 2024, to a private news channel. Geo Fact Check reviewed the original recording, which is more than 40 minutes long. At no point in the discussion did the politician mention Pakistan’s airspace being used by the United States.
Geo Fact Check also analysed the viral clip using the University at Buffalo’s DeepFake-o-Meter. The tool returned a fake probability score of 99.7%, indicating the video is highly likely to be generated using artificial intelligence.
Furthermore, Hive Moderation, an AI content detection platform, assigned the footage an aggregated score of 99.7%, which also suggests that the material was produced using artificial intelligence.
Visual examination also shows that Abbas’s lip movements and facial expressions do not consistently match the audio. This mismatch is another strong indication that the footage was manipulated.
Verdict: The circulating clip was manipulated using AI tools. Allama Raja Nasir Abbas did not make any statement about Pakistan’s airspace or the other claims attributed to him in the video.
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