A misreport on the home page of the agency’s website caused embarrassment to the media and regime in Iran. Authorities trying to prove that not only were they hit by enemy operations and that Israel was also suffering, announced that an Israeli base had been set on fire by ‘unknown elements’ – it soon became clear that this was a Palestinian factory near Ramallah.
The official news agency “Tasnim”, which is affiliated with the student organizations and universities in Iran, usually publishes extensively about any suspicious event that takes place in Israel, along with an interpretation that implies that it is a deliberate sabotage operation, in order to raise Iranian morale.
The media today reported extensively on a large fire that broke out in an Israeli military base called “a-Ram”, in the news that the fire brigade was unable to take control of the fire and great damage was done to the base. The article, according to Israel Today, hinted that the incident was a deliberate sabotage against the “Zionist security forces.”
But media outlets affiliated with the opposition in the country rushed to investigate the incident and discovered that it was a fire in a small appliance factory located south of the city of Ramallah and that no IDF base was damaged by the fire, which was extinguished by Palestinian fire services.
As reported in Israel today, the desperation of conservative elements in the Iranian media to present achievements in the shadow war against Israel has in the past led to other puzzling publications. Last month, the Tasnim news agency published a report that due to a series of severe power outages, the city of Yavneh became a “ghost town” and hinted that it was a cyber attack that damaged the city’s electricity supply and a nearby chemical plant. In Israel, of course, they denied any connection between several power outages that took place in the city, which remained inhabited, and an Iranian cyber attack.