Fact check: Fake ‘captured US forces’ images – and is Cyprus in Nato?
Round-up of fact checks from the last few days compiled by Full Fact.
This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact-checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
In recent days, Full Fact has seen more fake images relating to the war in the Middle East circulating on social media – many of them AI-generated. And we’ve seen at least two examples of fake images being shared with claims they show captured US servicemen.
A set of three pictures has been shared on Facebook and X with claims they depict US soldiers from the elite Delta Force unit “captured by Iran”. But the pictures – which show men in combat fatigues being escorted by masked soldiers, and kneeling near a picture of the former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian flags – aren’t real.
Uncropped versions of the images include a distinctive diamond in the corner, which is the watermark of Google’s Gemini AI chatbot.
And when we ran the images through Google’s SynthID detector, it reported that all three also contained an invisible SynthID digital watermark which can be used to identify content which has been created or edited with Google’s AI tools.
There are also visual inconsistencies in the images, such as a date on one reading that it was taken on ‘2026/04/18’, a date which hasn’t occurred yet.
A different viral image seemingly shows three US servicemen being led away from a downed B-2 stealth bomber by Iranian soldiers – but it’s also fake.
American B-2 stealth bombers have been used to strike Iran, but at the time of writing there have been no credible reports of any of these particular aircraft being shot down or crashing.
There is also a number of clues in the image itself indicating that it isn’t real.
It shows what appears to be three US servicemen, even though according to the US Air Force, B-2 aircraft are manned only by a crew of two. In addition, the image features an improbably large Iranian flag in the background, and in higher quality versions of the picture, one of the Iranian soldiers escorting the US servicemen appears to have three hands.
Full Fact has confirmed that this image also contains a SynthID watermark. It appears to have first been shared on X by an account which said it was created “as a parody”.
For more on the many false and misleading claims circulating on social media at the moment, see Full Fact’s round-up of Middle East conflict fact checks.
We also have a toolkit offering tips anyone can use to identify bad information, plus specific guides on how to spot misleading images online, how to fact check misleading videos and how a fact checker spots if something is AI.
Is Cyprus in Nato?
In a TV interview last week, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy claimed that Cyprus is “part of Nato” and “a Nato country”.
That’s not correct. Cyprus is not a Nato member.
Mr Lammy also claimed something slightly different in two other interviews on the same morning, when he said that Cyprus is a “Nato ally”.
As an EU member, Cyprus is allied with most Nato countries, and has signalled its desire to join the organisation. However, this is complicated by the fact that the Republic of Cyprus is currently not recognised by Turkey, which is a Nato member.
Although Nato membership is open to all European countries, existing members must agree to allow a new country to join.
It is worth noting that the UK, a Nato founding member, operates a number of Sovereign Base Areas on the island of Cyprus, including RAF Akrotiri, which was targeted by a drone attack on March 1. These bases are UK overseas territory.
