Old Video Misrepresented as Houthi Attack on Aramco Facility

A video recently shared on social media claimed to show a fire at an Aramco facility in Riyadh following a Houthi attack. However, an investigation by Misbar’s team at Al-Araby TV revealed that the footage was misleading. The video was actually old and did not depict a Houthi attack on an Aramco facility in Riyadh.

The video was first published on Instagram by the account asaluyehkhabar on June 2, 2021, with a caption stating that it showed an explosion at the Tehran refinery that caused no fatalities. The post explained that a fire had broken out in one of the refinery’s liquefied petroleum gas lines. The video was also shared by other Instagram accounts on June 3, 2021, which described it as showing a massive fire at the Shahid Tondguyan Refinery in Tehran.

The details in the video matched media reports from that time about a fire at the Tondguyan Oil Refinery in southern Tehran. Tehran’s crisis management official told Iranian state television that the fire resulted from a leak in a liquefied petroleum gas line. The official IRNA news agency reported the next day that firefighters had controlled the blaze and quoted a spokesperson for the Tehran Oil Refining Company as saying the refinery would resume production. The spokesperson also noted that the sounds of explosions were caused by the deformation of a metal storage tank.

The video resurfaced following a Reuters report published on October 3, 2023, which mentioned a large plume of smoke near a Saudi Aramco facility in Riyadh. The circulation of the video comes amid rising tensions between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Earlier in October, the Saudi-led coalition claimed that the Houthis were responsible for a drone attack on a power distribution station in Medina, an allegation the Houthis denied. Reuters also reported that Saudi Arabia was preparing for a large-scale military operation against the Houthis in Yemen.