VERDICT: FALSE — The viral image is doctored. The original photograph shows a handshake, not a hand-kiss, and the Saudi official in it is not the defence minister.
The claim
Since 26 October 2026, an image has been spreading on X and Facebook purporting to show Saudi Arabia’s Defence Minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, kissing the hand of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during a meeting in Tehran. The picture arrived alongside a real diplomatic event: that same day, Pezeshkian met senior security officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye in the Iranian capital to discuss regional security. Presented in that context, the image looked plausible — a striking gesture at a high-stakes meeting. Fact-checkers tracking its spread counted tens of thousands of views on individual posts, with the image reposted multiple times across both platforms.
Some of the captions went further than the picture itself, presenting the supposed gesture as a pledge of allegiance or a sign of submission. That reading is exactly what makes the image worth checking: it does not merely mislabel a photograph, it invents a political meaning for a meeting that actually happened.
The facts
First, the meeting was real — but no hand-kiss was reported. On 26 October, Pezeshkian did meet Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin in Tehran. Photographs released by the Iranian presidency from that meeting show ordinary greetings, including handshakes. No credible Saudi, Iranian or international outlet reported that the Saudi defence minister kissed the Iranian president’s hand, and no such moment appears in the official meeting photographs.
Second, the viral image traces back to a different event, months earlier. A reverse image search leads to a report published in early July 2026 about condolence meetings in Tehran around the funeral proceedings for Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The photograph in that report, credited to the Saudi Foreign Ministry, is captioned as showing Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Elkhereiji talking with President Pezeshkian. The background, the clothing and the positions of the two men match the viral image closely.
Third, two things were changed: the person and the gesture. In the original photograph, Elkhereiji — the deputy foreign minister, not the defence minister — is shaking hands with Pezeshkian. In the viral version, the handshake has been replaced with a hand-kiss, and the Saudi official is misidentified as Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman. The man in the original picture is simply not the man named in the claim.
Fourth, the manipulation itself leaves traces. Analysis of the viral image with AI-detection tools returned a 99% likelihood of AI generation from one detector, and around 90% likelihood that it was edited from two others. Close inspection also shows deformities around the Saudi official’s fingers and hand as he appears to kiss the president’s hand, along with slight distortions on the president’s cheek and neck — the kind of small errors that appear when a real photograph is digitally altered.
Put together, the evidence points one way. A genuine photograph from July was taken out of its context, its gesture was altered, its subject was mislabelled, and the result was attached to a real October meeting to make the fabrication believable.
Verdict
FALSE. Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman did not kiss President Pezeshkian’s hand in Tehran. The image circulating online is an altered version of a July 2026 photograph showing Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Elkhereiji shaking hands with Pezeshkian. The meeting on 26 October was real; the hand-kiss was not.
Why it matters
A doctored gesture can do damage that a doctored headline cannot. Diplomacy runs on small signals — who meets whom, who shakes whose hand, who stands where — and readers reasonably treat a photograph as proof of what happened in the room. When a fake image turns a routine handshake into an act of deference, it rewrites the balance of a relationship between two countries that are navigating a war, a blockade and months of stalled diplomacy. People who share it are not just passing on a wrong picture; they are passing on a false story about who bowed to whom. Checking the original photograph takes a minute. Believing the altered one can shape how thousands of people understand a fragile regional moment.
Related reading: our earlier reporting on Russia’s wartime visit to Tehran and our fact-check on another AI-manipulated viral video. The original July 2026 photograph can be seen in Arab News’ report on the Saudi condolence visit, and the full image analysis is set out in iVerify Pakistan’s fact-check.
