Fake News Alert: Putin Didn’t Hail Iran’s Response To Israel Like Mehr News Falsely Claimed

If someone comes across something from what they deem to be a “reputable source” whose claims align with their own wishful thinking expectations but can’t be independently verified, then it’s best to take it with a heavy dose of salt.

Iran’s Mehr News claimed in an article on Tuesday that “Putin hails Iran's ‘tactful’ punishing of aggressor Israel”. They added that the Russian leader allegedly said that “What the Islamic Republic of Iran did in response to that act that happened criminally and in the light of the inaction of the Security Council, was the best way to punish the aggressor and represented the tactfulness and rationality of Iran's politicians.” That never happened though since the official Kremlin press release makes no mention of it.

The closest that any official source comes to these words is the Foreign Ministry’s statement, which noted that “this attack was undertaken as part of the right to self-defence stipulated in Article 51 of the UN Charter in response to the attacks on Iranian targets in the region, including the strike on the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus on April 1, which our country strongly denounced.” Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN also said something similar.

In his words, “You are aware that an attack on a diplomatic mission is a casus belli under international law. And if Western missions were under attack, you would not hesitate to retaliate and then you would be proving your case in this chamber. Because for you everything that concerns Western missions and Western citizens is sacred and must be protected. But when it comes to other states, their citizens and their rights, including the right to self-defense, then ‘it’s different’, that’s what you say.”

These are principled positions, but they’re not the same as the words that Mehr News falsely attributed to President Putin when he spoke with his Iranian counterpart. Many folks from the Alt-Media Community fell for this fake news, however, because they were preconditioned to believe it by the thoughts that a top influencer shared on this subject. That person has been hosted by leading Russian institutions so some people mistakenly think that he has inside information about that country’s policies.

His article for publicly financed Sputnik that was published before Iran’s retaliation described Israel’s bombing of its consulate as an attack on both the SCO and BRICS in which Russia participates. Its release on that platform might have made some believe that the preceding claim was state-approved, but that’s not true since contributors’ views are their own and sometimes contradict state policy. For example, Sputnik’s experts were critical of IMEC, but then one day later President Putin praised that project.  

Nevertheless, average folks remain under the false impression that publicly financed Sputnik is state-run, and that this therefore means that everything published on their platform is state-approved. Likewise, this false impression also carries over to those people who are hosted by leading Russian institutions, such as after that top influencer was hosted by the Valdai Club and even the Foreign Ministry. These false perceptions accordingly preconditioned them into believing what he wrote after Iran’s retaliation.

He claimed that Russia and China provided “intel” to Iran ahead of its strike on Israel, concluding that they “have Tehran’s back”, which was his interpretation of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister confirming that his country remains in constant contact with Iran. An ordinarily mundane and perfunctory statement was conspiratorially twisted as implying a secret Russian hand in Iran’s retaliation. He then spun a prominent Duma member’s poem about bilateral ties as supposed proof of his false conclusion.

That top influencer has over six times as many followers on X as Mehr News does at 155k to 24k so it’s not far-fetched to believe that his views preconditioned people into believing that outlet’s claim. Furthermore, that individual’s article explaining how Russia supposedly has Iran’s back was published at The Cradle, which is a reputable site specializing on West Asian affairs. They have four times as many X followers as Mehr News does with 101k.

Their ideological alignment with the Islamic Republic and partnership with that top influencer might explain why they fell for this fake news report about President Putin allegedly hailing Iran’s retaliation against Israel. With all due respect to them, their News Desk was sloppy and didn’t verify Mehr News’ claim despite hyperlinking to the Russian version of the official Kremlin press release in their article. This development inadvertently amplified that fake news and laundered it to their global audience.

Had it not been for the earlier mentioned top influencer’s preconditioning campaign, however, many among the Alt-Media Community might have questioned this sensational claim since the objective reality is that Russia isn’t against Israel. In fact, they’ve enjoyed impressively pragmatic relations ever since President Putin first entered office in 2000, which continue to this day in spite of Israel’s partial compliance with the US’ anti-Russian demands. Here are three relevant analyses on this subject:

* “President Putin On Israel: Quotes From The Kremlin Website”

* “Clarifying Lavrov’s Comparison Of The Latest Israeli-Hamas War To Russia’s Special Operation”

* “A Duma Member Described Iran’s Retaliation Against Israel As A ‘Beautiful Theatrical Production’”

The second of them also debunks that top influencer’s five most ridiculous claims about Russian policy towards Palestine that included such tall tales as it preparing to break the blockade with Turkiye as well as plotting to prosecute Israel for war crimes, neither of which happened as is known. His track record of factually false claims should have caused his media partners to distance themselves from him, but they likely believe that there’s still some ideological/narrative interest to be advanced by promoting him.

Without intending to, these top Russian institutions and prestigious media platforms lent the impression that this person is credible, thus unwittingly misleading others into thinking that their regularly unverified claims represent inside information. This in turn preconditioned a large segment of the Alt-Media Community into believing that there might be some truth to what Mehr News falsely claimed that President Putin said, which accounts for why so many were fooled by this fake news earlier in the week.

The lesson to be learned is that perceived closeness to certain institutions doesn’t automatically mean privileged access, and even if the latter has been given, individuals can always be passed along false information by “trusted sources” to launder into the global media ecosystem for whatever reason. They could also dishonestly hint or even outright claim that certain details in their works are derived from such sources even if they’re just invented out of thin air.

If someone comes across something from what they deem to be a “reputable source” whose claims align with their own wishful thinking expectations but can’t be independently verified, then it’s best to take it with a heavy dose of salt, especially if that “reputable source” has a track record of factually false claims. Perhaps Mehr News would have still lied about what President Putin claimed even if that top influencer didn’t precondition the Alt-Media Community, but that person made it much easier for them to do so.

UPDATE: It turns out that Mehr News quoted President Raisi’s official readout of his talk with President Putin, but that doesn’t the fact that it’s fake news. Iran either innocently or deliberately misquoted the Russian leader, but since the falsely alleged quote didn’t circulate widely, it’s understandable that neither Kremlin spokesman Peskov nor Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova set the record straight in order to avoid creating a public pretext for third parties to exploit for dividing them. They also weren’t asked about this at their press conferences either, which helped this scandalous issue go away.