Iran’s Information War: How Tehran Faked an F-35 Kill, Spread Video Game Footage and Tried to Turn One Real Loss Into a Propaganda Triumph

Watch: U.S. F-15E Shot Down Over Iran — Breaking News Coverage

A US fighter jet has been shot down over Iran, three US sources said, confirming Iranian state media reports. US forces have launched search and rescue efforts and were looking for two pilots, two of the sources said. Potential rescue efforts appeared to be captured in video posted to social media and geolocated by CNN

Where It Happened: The Crash Location

The F-15E went down in the mountainous Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province of southwestern Iran, a rural region spanning over 15,500 square kilometres. The area sits deep inside Iranian territory — U.S. rescue aircraft were filmed flying approximately 55 miles inside Iran, nearly 200 miles from the nearest American base. The A-10 Thunderbolt II was lost separately near the Strait of Hormuz to the south.

Map: Confirmed U.S. aircraft losses April 3, 2026. Strategy Battles graphic — not to scale.

The Real Loss: What Actually Happened

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron, 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, was downed over western Iran on Friday. U.S. officials confirmed the loss to CBS News, NBC News, Axios, The Washington Post, and Military Times. One crew member was rescued by U.S. special operations forces. The second crew member, a weapons systems officer, remained missing as of Friday evening. The House Armed Services Committee was notified by the Pentagon that the status of the second service member is unknown. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the president had been briefed.

Separately, a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II was struck near the Strait of Hormuz on the same day. The pilot navigated the damaged aircraft to Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting safely and being rescued. Two HH-60G Pave Hawk combat rescue helicopters deployed to find the F-15E crew were also hit by Iranian fire, injuring personnel on board, though both returned to base. In total, Iran caused two U.S. military aircraft to crash and hit two rescue helicopters in a single day — less than 48 hours after President Trump told the American public Iran had been “completely decimated.”

“From the structure it certainly looks like an F-15, and from the tail flash stripe markings from the 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom.”

— Peter Layton, former Royal Australian Air Force officer and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, speaking to CNN after examining Iranian wreckage images, April 3, 2026

Layer One: Calling an F-15E an F-35

Iran’s first and most consequential act of disinformation on April 3 was the misidentification of the downed aircraft. The IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters spokesman declared that “a second US fifth-generation F-35 was struck and downed over central Iran by a new IRGC Aerospace Force air-defence system.” Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency, state broadcaster IRIB, and Tasnim News Agency all amplified the claim and it spread globally within minutes.

The wreckage told a completely different story. CNN analysis found a partial logo reading “US Air Forces in Europe” on the tail fin alongside a distinctive red stripe — markings exclusive to the F-15E of the 494th Fighter Squadron. An Advanced Concept Ejection Seat recovered near the site was confirmed as the model used in the F-15E, not the F-35. The Aviationist concluded that the debris belonged to an F-15E Strike Eagle, not a Lightning II. Two weapons experts told CBS News independently the debris was consistent with an F-15. N.R. Jenzen-Jones of Armament Research Services reached the same conclusion. Claiming to have shot down an F-35, America’s premier fifth-generation stealth fighter worth around $100 million per unit, delivers a propaganda victory of an entirely different magnitude to downing an F-15E. Iran knew what it had. It chose to call it something else.

Defence Blog went further, reporting that Iranian state television appeared to have used its own missile wreckage to fabricate footage of a downed American aircraft entirely. For our full investigation into Iran’s earlier F-35 claims, read: Iran Claims Second U.S. F-35 Downed in Two Weeks as Pentagon Stays Silent.

Layer Two: Video Game Footage Passed Off as Real Combat

As the misidentified wreckage images spread, a second wave of disinformation moved even faster. A video circulated widely on X claiming to show the IRGC downing an American F-15 over Qeshm Island. It appeared to show a jet struck by a missile and exploding dramatically. It was footage from a video game. Gizmodo identified it as likely taken from Arma, a military tactical shooter series known for photorealistic graphics. Lead Stories confirmed the clip matched gameplay from Arma 3 or Digital Combat Simulator. An AI detection tool estimated it was 88.5 percent likely to be AI-generated. AFP fact-checkers found the same clip had been posted on February 28, the very first day of the war, making it impossible that it showed Friday’s crash.

Watch: Iran’s Disinformation Campaign

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed Thursday that it struck a US F-35 stealth fighter jet over central Iran. FRANCE 24’s Reza Sayah reports from Tehran, Iran

Layer Three: Fake Capture Videos and Bounty Appeals

Iran’s third line of disinformation concerned the fate of the missing F-15E crew member. As the real search-and-rescue operation unfolded across the mountains of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, Iranian state television broadcast appeals urging civilians to find and hand over any American pilot. The governor of the province offered ten billion tomans — approximately $76,000 — for anyone who handed over the “criminal American pilot.” An earlier on-screen message had urged citizens to “shoot them if you see them.”

Within hours, a video spread on X claiming to show the American pilot in the custody of a pro-Iran militia calling itself the Sons of Haidar al-Karrar. The clip showed a pixelated figure with arms raised approaching someone with a drawn weapon. No faces were visible and no credible media organisation could verify it. Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf taunted Washington on X: “This brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?'” Neither the capture claim nor the failed rescue claim was confirmed by the Pentagon, CENTCOM, or any named U.S. official as of Friday evening.

The A-10 Loss: A Separate Incident

The A-10 Thunderbolt II loss near the Strait of Hormuz was a separate incident from the F-15E shootdown. The single-seat attack aircraft had been operating in the area hunting Iranian fast boats. Iran claimed the aircraft crashed into the Persian Gulf after its air defenses targeted it near the strait. U.S. officials confirmed to The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and The Washington Post that the A-10 was struck and the pilot ejected safely into Kuwaiti airspace before being recovered. The aircraft was destroyed.

The Disinformation Timeline: April 3, 2026

Strategy Battles disinformation timeline — April 3, 2026.

What the Evidence Actually Showed

Analysis

Iran’s information operation on April 3 was sophisticated, layered, and largely successful in the short term. Within hours of a genuine military event, Tehran had constructed a parallel narrative that reached hundreds of millions of people through state media amplification and social media virality. The three-layer strategy — misidentifying the aircraft, flooding the zone with video game footage, and fabricating capture claims — was designed not to convince experts but to overwhelm ordinary viewers with a volume of content that made the false narrative feel more established than the true one.

The truth is damaging enough for Washington without embellishment. A manned U.S. combat aircraft was downed over enemy territory for the first time in this conflict. A second was lost the same day. An American service member’s fate is unknown in hostile territory with a $76,000 bounty on their head. Less than 48 hours before all of this, President Trump told the American people Iran had “no anti-aircraft equipment” and that its radar was “100% annihilated.” The Pentagon said nothing publicly all day. Iran’s fabrication was not for the world’s benefit. It was for its domestic audience, and for the historical record Tehran wants to write about this war regardless of what actually happened in the mountains of southwestern Iran on the morning of April 3, 2026.