Verdict: FALSE. The video shows a B-2 bomber and four F-35 fighter jets flying over Alaska during the Trump–Putin summit on 15 August 2025 — not American bombers heading to Iran.
The claim
A video spreading on Facebook since 1 November claims to show US B-2 stealth bombers “heading towards Iran”, with captions suggesting a nuclear war could be near. It was shared by a Facebook page called “Rule Over Power” and has been passed around as fresh evidence that a new American strike on Iran is under way.
It lands at a moment of genuine tension. The United States and Israel bombed Iranian targets earlier this year, and talk of further confrontation has not gone away. That real anxiety is exactly what makes the clip so shareable — and so misleading. It follows a pattern we have seen before: a similar viral video claiming Iran had attacked a US carrier was also debunked, and viral videos falsely placed in the Strait of Hormuz have circulated the same way.
The facts
1. The footage is more than a year old. The formation in the video — one B-2A Spirit flanked by four F-35 Lightning II fighter jets — flew over Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August 2025, as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin greeted each other on the tarmac at the start of their summit on Ukraine. The flyover was broadcast live and watched by hundreds of thousands of people online that day.
2. It was reported the same day, in real time. The War Zone reported on 15 August 2025 that the bomber, flanked by four F-35s, flew over the base as the two leaders shook hands. Air & Space Forces Magazine reported the same day that four F-35s and a B-2 flew over the leaders after they stepped off their aircraft. The Aviationist covered it the same day too. None of this is new footage, and none of it has anything to do with Iran.
3. The images match frame for frame. The YouTube channel VH Aviation uploaded footage of the same flyover — the same formation, the same base, the same backdrop — on 15 August 2025, under the title “USAF B-2 Spirit and F-35 flyover during Putin’s visit to Anchorage”. The US military’s own photo archive, DVIDS, holds photographs of the same formation taken that day by Air Force photographers Nicholas Holland and Moises Vasquez.
4. The bombers were in Alaska for the summit. The B-2s had flown in from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri specifically for the occasion. A second B-2 sat parked on the flight line as a static display while the leaders’ motorcade passed it. The flyover was a piece of stagecraft for a diplomatic meeting — a show of American air power staged for Putin’s arrival, not the opening move of an attack on Iran.
5. Nothing in the clip points to Iran. The video shows aircraft in the sky over an Alaskan air base. The posts sharing it offer no date, no location and no source for the claim that the bombers are heading to Iran. An old video, stripped of its date and given a frightening new caption, is not evidence of anything happening now. One honest caveat: proving a video is old does not by itself prove that no separate US military movements were taking place — but this video is not evidence of one.
Verdict
FALSE. The viral video does not show US B-2 bombers heading to Iran. It shows a B-2 and four F-35s flying over Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August 2025, during the Trump–Putin summit. The footage is real; the claim built on it is not.
Why it matters
Recycled war footage does real damage. Presented as a strike in progress, a 15-month-old flyover can convince people that a new war has already begun, feed panic about nuclear conflict, and drown out accurate reporting at exactly the moment when the public most needs to know what is actually happening. In a region already on edge after this year’s US–Israeli strikes on Iran, old clips dressed up as breaking news distort debate, move markets and harden opinions on the basis of something that never happened.
