Pages on social media circulated a video they claimed was recent, showing President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani while they were at a restaurant in Damascus.
The fact-checking team traced the claim by breaking the clip into still frames and running a reverse image search on them, alongside examining the archival timeline of the content and comparing the search results with the circulating material. The trace showed that the clip has been documented since June 19, 2026, which disproves its recency, contrary to what was promoted.
Why is this claim misleading?
Out of temporal context: An old clip was recirculated and presented as documenting a recent appearance by al-Sharaa and al-Shaibani, giving the incident a date other than its real one, to suggest a new development that did not happen.
