Does this video show Iran's ballistic missile attack on the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, on January 15, 2024? No, that's not true: The video is from 2022, and shows the American C-RAM (counter rocket, artillery and mortar system) responding to a missile attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, on January 13, 2022. Although the attacks on January 15, 2024, did not directly target the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, they occurred in its vicinity.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by @wforw3 on January 15, 2024, featuring a text overlay in English:
Iranian IRGC fired 6 FATA-110 tactical ballistic missiles at USA base in Iraq, Erbil
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jan 16 21:05:27 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories conducted a reverse image search (archived here) on January 17, 2024, using TinEye. It led to footage published on 9GAG (archived here) by an anonymous account named 9GAGGER on January 13, 2022, with the title, in English, "The U.S Military C-RAM System, Recently Used To Defend The U.S Embassy in Baghdad."
Lead Stories then performed a Google search (archived here) using the sentence "The U.S Military C-RAM System, Recently Used To Defend The U.S Embassy in Baghdad." The results led to the same footage appearing in the video on TikTok, in a video on YouTube (archived here), published by the channel WarLeaks on January 14, 2022, with the title: "C-RAM Responds To Missile Attack On US Embassy In Baghdads Green Zone." In the 1:08-minute-long YouTube video, the TikTok content is visible from the 0:29 mark.
This is what the video looked like on YouTube at the time of writing:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Thu Jan 18 00:19:13 2024 UTC)
The Google search also revealed a report (archived here) by Business Insider on January 14, 2022, titled "Stunning videos appear to show rockets raining down on the US embassy compound in Baghdad." The article links to a tweet (archived here) by the Fox News Correspondent @LucasFoxNews on January 13, 2022, with the caption: "Video purportedly showing rocket attack on U.S. embassy in Baghdad tonight, U.S. military's C-RAM engaging."
On January 15, 2024, Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, experienced multiple attacks (archived here) near the U.S. Consulate. Subsequently, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed (archived here) responsibility for the attacks, asserting that they targeted "headquarters of spies" and "anti-Iranian terrorist gatherings in parts of the region."
