Altered image of Iranian boat falsely linked to conflict in western Myanmar
A photo of a boat flying the flags of Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been altered and shared on Burmese social media with a false claim it shows a boat used by the Arakan Army, a rebel group fighting against Myanmar’s junta to carve out its own autonomous homeland. The doctored picture was shared shortly after local media reported a key navy training base was captured by the rebel group in early September.
“Arakan Army’s navy is using this boat,” read the Burmese-language Facebook post on September 30, 2024.
The post, which has been shared more than 800 times, shows a speedboat bearing the flags of the Arakan Army and its political wing — the United League of Arakan (archived links here and here).
The image was shared alongside similar claims on Facebook here, here and here.
The post circulated on Burmese social media following reports the Arakan Army had seized a key naval training centre in the southern part of the Rakhine state on September 5, which local news reports said is the first major navy base to be captured by the ethnic armed group (archived link).
The Arakan Army has attacked forces of Myanmar’s ruling junta since November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021.
But the image has been digitally altered.
Flying Iran’s flag
A reverse image search on Tineye found the image published on the website of Reuters on January 4, 2020 (archived link).
The photo’s caption read: “A boat with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard sails at undisclosed location off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran August 2019 “.
The photo was credited to Nazanin Tabatabaee/West Asia News Agency, a Tehran-based media organisation.
The photo shows the flags flown on the boat are actually Iran’s national flag and what appears to be the flag of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological arm of Iran’s military (archived links here and here).
The same photo has been published in other news reports related to Iran in 2019, 2022 and 2023 (archived links here, here and here).
Below is a screenshot of the altered image in the false post (left) and the photo from West Asia News Agency (right):
AFP has previously debunked misinformation related to the Arakan Army here and here.
