The helicopter crash and resulting death of Islamic Republic of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi and other high-ranking officials including their Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian caused widespread speculation online regarding the cause of the crash.
The poor weather conditions that were widely visible in Iranian-shared media during the search and rescue efforts, along with the relative frequency of helicopter crashes in general, suggest that the initial reports of a "hard landing" in harsh weather conditions were highly plausible. This, however, did not deter conspiracy theorists and politically motivated self-titled geopolitical analysts from attempting to maneuver public discourse towards their preferred narrative. In the context of tensions between Iran and Israel, for example, certain online commentators were inevitably quick to assert that this could have only been the work of Mossad, despite no evidence to suggest so.
While hostilities between the two countries mean that this is not entirely impossible, unsubstantiated claims such as Raisi's death being announced in Israeli media before anywhere else, alluding to Israeli prior knowledge of the event, highlight the need for caution and due diligence when assessing online information.
A failure to do so can have consequences, as an unsuspecting news reporter discovered to his embarrassment. A joke that had been circulating online about the crash became a widespread misinformation incident when the Hamas terror group mistakenly took it seriously. Following the crash, an Israeli joke suggested that a Mossad agent named “Eli Copter” was responsible for the crash, playing on the Hebrew word for helicopter. This humorous post was intended as satire but quickly spiralled out of control.
Hamas’s Telegram channel, which has over 136,000 followers, picked up the joke and reported it as fact, stating, “It is said that the helicopter pilot was a Mossad agent named Eli Kopter.” The joke further escalated when it was reported as factual by a political analyst on i24 News and also by a London-based Arabic language website, Al Sabah Almisry. This website erroneously claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had reported the involvement of Mossad agents named Eli Copter and Avi Ron, another play on words.
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