The Islamic Resistance in Iraq released typically obscure attack claim in which they supposedly attacked a “vital target” in Haifa on the 24th of April, 2024. No evidence that the attack actually succeeded was provided by the group. News of the attack formally broke out at 11:55pm Iraqi time after the official channel of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq released a statement saying:

استهدف مجاهدو المقاومة الاسلامية في العراق اليوم الجمعة الموافق 26 – 4 – 2024 ، بواسطة الطيران المسيّر ، هدف حيوي في حيفا بأراضينا المحتلة ، مؤكدين استمرارنا في دكّ معاقل الأعدا  استكمالاً للمرحلة الثانية لعمليات مقاومة الاحتلال ، ونصرة اهلنا في غزة ، وردًا على المجازر الصهيونية بحق المدنيين الفلسطينيين العزّل.

Today, Friday, April 26, 2024, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, using drones, targeted a vital target in Haifa in our occupied territories, stressing that we will continue to destroy enemy strongholds in completion of the second phase of operations to resist the occupation, and to support our people in Gaza, and in response to the Zionist massacres against defenseless Palestinian civilians.

Just over an hour after this attack claim (1:11am local time), a video was released showing scenes of the operation. The video shows one drone being launched from a desert environment during the day. The background of the video is completely blurred, making geolocating or chronolocating the video difficult. However, it must be noted that these pro-Iran militias are notorious for recycling footage from previous drone launches. Before the drone is launched, a piece of paper with Arabic writing is held in front of the camera.

هدف حيوي في

 حيفا /2024/4

المقاومة الاسلامية في العراق

Vital target in

Haifa /4/2024

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq

The drone itself appears to be a Murad-5 Fixed Wing Kamakaze-type drone of Iranian origin.

This video of the attack can be viewed here.

[Archive Link – https://web.archive.org/web/20240427110103/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2GbaKh9KXQ]

As can be seen, the video only shows the launching of the missile and cuts out less than a second after it was shot. There is no indication from the video that the attack took place on the claimed day, was aimed at Haifa, or even whether the drone flew in the air for more than two seconds. It is worth noting the language used too – the Resistance never claim to have hit any target, they simply claim to have targeted a “vital target” in Haifa. 

A History of Misleading Attack Claims

Most of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s attack claims, and indeed most of the attack claims published by all pro-Iran facade militias in Iraq, are impossible to verify without eyewitness accounts. This is not to say that eyewitness accounts determine the factuality of attack claims, but it does often make impossible the process of verification. The claim is vague and the video is vaguer. Even vaguer still is the target – what does this “critical target” actually represent? Vague terminology that misleads potential sympathisers into believing a claimed attack caused more damage, was greater in nature, or even happened at all, is often used by violent groups seeking to consolidate support.

What we know 

The attempted attack did not raise any sirens in Israel. There was one air siren in the north of Israel as shown below, in the town of Shomera on the Israeli-Lebanese border, but this was a result of an attack which was claimed by Hezbollah just two hours after sirens. The claimed time of Hezbollah’s attack (8:30am) matches up with the time of the siren (8:33am).

No other siren had been sounded in Northern Israel in a time period that could match the attack claim.

What this means

All that can be said is that no evidence corroborates the claims made by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The Islamic Resistance has made an unfalsifiable attack claim. There is no evidence to believe that the attack happened, but a scenario where the launching did happen, but the drone either failed or was shot down before it entered Israel, is somewhat plausible. That, however, operates under the assumption that we believe that this drone really was fired at Israel, which is not necessarily the case. A kamikaze drone attack killed 4 Yemeni workers at the Khor Mor Gas Field in Iraqi Kurdistan on the same day that this drone was supposedly fired at Israel, with pro-Iran militias suspected of being behind it.

The misleading terminology is key to the plausibility of the attack claim published by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq. They do not say that they hit the target, they just say quite literally, that a target was targeted.

What we do know from the video is simply that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed to have targeted a “vital target” in Haifa. This means that even if the drone was launched and did genuinely target Haifa, but the drone was shot down, the statement released by the organisation although misleading, is plausible. 

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq’s careful use of terminology, as well as the militia choosing not to publicise the nature of this “vital target”, means that the narrative is impossible to verify or falsify.

Hence, the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, and the militias operating under its banner, are able to legitimise themselves as fighting Israel and supporting Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim resistance. In doing so, they look for the support of an Iraqi population that is understandably and overwhelmingly pro-Palestine. 

Whilst no evidence supports the claim made by the Iraqi Resistance, no evidence can counter it, and whilst intuition may point some Iraqis into seeing through this as a fake-attack, many (especially those with pre-existing sympathies for the pro-Iran militias) wont.

Spread of (Dis)Information

Jihad Brothers Team, which is a media affiliate of the militia Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, first posted about the attack at 11:49pm

Following this, the channel of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq released the claim, which was spread rampantly on X (formerly known of Twitter) and on other pro-Iran Iraqi Telegram Channels. The spread only intensified once the video of the launch was published by the Islamic Resistance an hour later.

The claim then spread further through traditional media outlets. The following examples show that the claims were often repeated by these outlets with a contextually misleading image.

[Link] [Archived Link]

[Link] [Archived Link]

[Link] [Archived Link]

The above three examples show that the claim was further disseminated by Al-Ahed News (Lebanon), PressBee (Yemen), and Rai al-Youm (unknown – editor-in-chief is prominent Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan). All three articles push the same narrative, that this so-called ‘vital target’ was targetted in Haifa. They also use an image that does not reflect the attack claim made by the Islamic Resistance. The published image in these three articles shows a night-time launch, not a daytime launch as the video released by the Islamic Resistance Shows. The image in question seems to be used frequently by media outlets pushing misleading narratives and stories about supposed drone attacks.

[Link] [Archived Link]

In addition to disseminating the misleading claim about the Islamic Resistance’s purported attack on this vital target’, this article includes an image completely unrelated to the incident. The picture shows a large explosion occurring in a dark environment. 

With a reverse image search, it can be observed that this image originally appeared in an Al-Jazeera article reportedly showing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on the 12th of August 2020. 

[Link] [Archived Link]

As well as spreading the disinformation that the Islamic Resistance attacked this ‘vital target’ in Israel, this article uses an image that has no relation to the attack. The picture shows an armoured vehicle bearing an American flag in front of an explosion of sorts on a hill. 

With a reverse image search, it can be determined that this image was taken no later than the 16th of December 2021, when it appeared in a New York Post article about a drone strike in Syria.

The spread of an unverifiable and misleading attack claim by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq serves to legitimise the group and its affiliated militias in Iraq as genuinely contributing to supporting the Palestinian cause in armed resistance against Israel. These unverifiable claims are further disseminated with the use of misleading images, highlighted by the examples of the outlets Ahl Masr News and Akhbar el-Yom. These contextually false images may lead audiences into believing that the images shows represent the claimed attack of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.