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Claim: A viral photo on social media claims to show a Liberia-flagged ship struck by an Iranian drone in the Persian Gulf.
Verdict: False! The viral photo used to make the claim is old. The photo dates back to a 2025 vessel collision incident in the Gulf of Oman.
Full Text
A Liberia-flagged vessel is reported to have been attacked by a drone in Saudi waters. A video of Liberia’s permanent representative at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Robert Wilmot Kpadeh has gone viral in which he is heard condemning the attack.
“Liberia would like to bring to the subcommittees’ attention an incident involving our flagged vessel, Arabia 3, IMO registered number 8771332. The vessel was sadly struck by a drone on March 7, 2026, which resulted in a fire and explosion on board while operating in the Saudi Arabian waters,” Kpadeh said in his speech published online here.
In response to that, multiple Facebook posts, mostly emanating from Liberia, such as this, this, this, and this, have been published with pictures purportedly showing the Liberia-flagged ship on fire. The posts have received several thousand reactions.
Given that misrepresentations and AI-generated content are increasingly being used amidst the US/Israel-Iran war to create false narratives, DUBAWA decided to fact-check the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA’s investigation began by verifying the claim that the affected vessel is Liberia-flagged and also that it was struck by a projectile arising from the US/Israel-War.
The IMO registration number of the alleged affected vessel, 8771332, was entered into www.vesselfinder.com, a free vessel tracking website. The results confirmed the vessel as Liberia-flagged. Other information confirmed on the website showed that tracking of the vessel stopped on March 7, 2026 – the day the vessel was allegedly struck. The vessel’s location was also confirmed to be in Saudi Arabian waters, the same location where the alleged vessel was struck.
Screenshot from vesselfinder.com confirms Liberia-flagged vessel struck by a projectile
The same details were confirmed when cross-checked on marinetraffic.com, another website for real-time tracking of ship movements.
According to the maritime news website SeaTrade Maritime, Saudi Aramco, the company that chartered the vessel, said an “incident” on March 7 forced them to shut down the vessel, and that “all personnel were successfully evacuated.”
DUBAWA reached out via email to Saudi Aramco and Borr Drilling, the owner of the vessel, for clarification about the undisclosed incident, but has yet to receive any feedback.
To verify the images, multiple reverse image searches were conducted using Google and Yandex.
Google Images returned the following results:
Results from Google reverse image search
From the results, it appears the same image appeared in previous news and social media publications, with one dating back to June 2025, several months before the US/Israel-Iran war.
Yandex also returned the following results:
Results from Yandex image search
The Yandex image search result also showed that the image had been previously uploaded online some eight months ago.
The results showed that at least the images used to depict the alleged Iranian strike on a Liberia-flagged vessel existed on the internet at least since June 2025, some 8 months before the US/Israel-Iran war.
Previous records of the image appeared in publications including this and this, where it was reported that the image showed the aftermath of a cargo ship colliding with another vessel.
“The MV Adalynn was left a flaming wreck after it was crashed into by another tanker, believed to be the MV Front Eagle, just south of the Strait of Hormuz,” a report by The Sun US said.
Another report by the Times of Israel also confirmed the June 2025 incident.
Conclusion
Based on the above, we conclude that the viral image supposedly showing a Liberia-flagged vessel struck by an Iranian drone amidst the US/Israel-Iran war is misleading.
