Featured Image Credit: GIL COHEN-MAGEN / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Iran, Israel, Viral, World News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Iran, Israel, Viral, World News
Iran has made a disturbing threat and revealed that it plans on assassinating Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iran is currently at war with Israel and the US, with the conflict starting between the three countries on February 28.
Israel and the US teamed up for the strikes at the end of last month that targeted several areas of Iran, including the country's capital of Tehran.
In one of the strikes an elementary school was hit, killing 168 people (many of whom were children).
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The incident has caused outrage across the globe, with even Pope Leo weighing in on it all and demanding a ceasefire.
Now Iran have pledged to assassinate Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the country branded a 'child-killer'.
"IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] vows to pursue and kill ‘child-killer’ Netanyahu if he is still alive," Iran’s IRNA news agency posted on Twitter on Sunday (March 15).
The questions about Netanyahu being alive or not comes after a clip of the Israeli PM's national address went viral.
In his speech, which lasted over half and hour, Netanyahu was seen talking directly to the camera while stood in front of a large Israeli flag. This was streamed by the the Government Press Office on March 12.
He said in part of the speech (via WION): "We are crushing Iran and Hezbollah. We eliminated the old tyrant, and the new tyrant, the puppet of the Revolutionary Guards, can't show his face in public."
Netanyahu's comments come amid reports that Iran's new supreme leader is 'in hiding'.
But there's an unusal moment in the video where Netanyahu appears to develop six fingers all of a sudden, sparking a lot of people online to wonder if the stream was generated using artificial intelligence and that the PM is actually dead.
AI 'often struggles with limbs and joints', Konstantin Levinzon, co-founder of Planet VPN, previously explained to UNILAD.
Elsewhere, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency published a report on Monday promoting speculation that Netanyahu had died. The report alleged that the PM's hideout had been bombed, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Netanyahu's office has since denied that the video fake and that Israel leader is dead.
"These are fake news; the Prime Minister is fine," the office insisted, per Middle East Monitor.
As well as the office statement, multiple fact-checking sites confirmed that the video of Netanyahu from earlier this week was legitimate and not AI generated.