Fake News Alert: India’s Army Chief Didn’t Confess To Backstabbing Iran

The Alt-Media Community at large is comprised of “anti-Zionist activists” who already distrust India due to its close ties with Israel and also mistakenly believe that BRICS is a security bloc, which preconditioned them to believe that its Army Chief admitted to helping the US sink an Iranian ship.

India’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) debunked a viral AI-assisted video of Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi claiming that his country informed Israel of the location of the Iranian vessel that was later sunk by a US submarine after returning home from the multilateral drill that India had hosted just beforehand. Turkish influencer Furkan Gözükara helped it go viral, but he later apologized upon discovering that was an AI-assisted fake and blamed popular Pakistani journalist Wajahat Kazmi for “mislead[ing]” him.

The aforesaid sequence through which this viral AI-assisted fake video was laundered into the public discourse on X contextualizes why India’s PIB concluded that it was “Pakistani propaganda”. It already fooled countless folks by then, however, including top Alt-Media influencer Pepe Escobar. He reposted it with the caption, “Vile, coward, traitorous rats. Unredeemable, in every aspect - geopolitical and moral. These people should be expelled from BRICS. And from the Russia-Iran-India transportation corridor.”

Pepe’s reaction was typical of the Alt-Media Community’s, which took for granted the legitimacy of this video due to their distrust of India as a result of its close ties with the US and Israel, the second of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited right before the Third Gulf War. Many members of this community are “anti-Zionist activists” whose opposition to Israel is one of the defining features of their worldview. They therefore fiercely hate India for its close ties with Israel as exemplified by Pepe’s very harsh words.

The abovementioned description of the community’s sentiment, especially that which is espoused by top influencers therein like Pepe, is easily discernable and was thus assumedly known by Pakistan. That explains why its “information warriors” decided to concoct this particular fake whereby they relied on AI to make Dwivedi claim that his country informed Israel of the location of the Iranian vessel that was later sunk by a US submarine. Simply put, they knew that it would resonate and naturally spread, which it did.

Most observers either don’t know or are too zealously “anti-Zionist” to accept that India always balances between rivals like Iran and Israel just as Russia does. While Modi has condemned Iran’s attacks against the Gulf Kingdoms, albeit without mentioning Iran’s name, he also wants the conflict to end as soon as possible. India sympathizes with Israel and the Gulf Kingdoms, but it’s not allied with them against Iran, just like Russia sympathizes with Iran but isn’t allied with it against Israel and the Gulf Kingdoms.

Most observers who aren’t “anti-Zionist activists” don’t recognize India’s and Russia’s respective regional balancing acts due to their false perception that BRICS is a security bloc, which Russia’s BRICS Sherpa belatedly debunked last month. It’s these complementary factors of the Alt-Media Community at large being “anti-Zionist activists” who already distrust India due to its close ties with Israel and them mistakenly believing that BRICS is a security bloc which account for why this fake was so successful.

India has struggled to inform the masses of its Russian-like regional balancing act and the fact that BRICS isn’t a security bloc, hence why so many were susceptible to falling for this Pakistani AI-assisted fake video due to their aforesaid false perceptions, but it’s here where Russia can help. Last December’s launch of RT India solidified their media ties, so it’s possible that RT International can succeed where India has yet to, thus correcting the Alt-Media community’s perceptions about it. The sooner, the better.