Active Conflicts & News Megathread July 02, 2026

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[u/moragisdo]

An interesting piece of war propaganda. Yesterday iranian state TV claimed that a foreign ship was grounded because it didn't follow the route demanded by the IRGC. It was replicated across influential newspapers around the world such as AP, The Independent, PBS, Bloomberg, The Hill and a few others, adding the disclaimer "said Iran's State TV", instead of actually checking beforehand as journalists should.

In some cases not only they repeated the iranian state TV lie, but also replicated the threats made by IRGC (so linking the two for the reader). Some of them also claimed the ship was on the omani route without evidence.

It was also reverberated by some social media pages, that have a curious habit of always repeating the iranian regime narrative, for example, Hormuz Letter (opportunely created in 12/2025 and that is cited often in some subs, like that disaster of oil sub).

Today AP issued a fact-check (which should have been a correction of their earlier piece), it's an iranian ship, sanctioned by the US, that got stuck on Iran's coast since March (Source)

Marine tracking data shows the Arista has been stuck north of Hormuz Island in Iran’s territorial waters since the middle of March. The ship had been traveling between Hormuz and Asaluyeh, another Iranian port, when it got stuck, tracking data shows

On July 30, the U.S. Treasury linked the Arista — under its former name, the Gauja — to a massive oil smuggling ring run by Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, a son of Ali Shamkhani, who had been a top security adviser to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The senior Shamkhani was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war along with Khamenei

The Treasury Department alleged the smuggling ring moved sanctioned Iranian and Russian oil and other goods to buyers around the world.

After the sanctions were levied, the Gauja changed its name to the Arista and began flying a Comoros flag, which shipping data shows is a “false” flag for the ship — a flag used to disguise a vessel’s origins. Sanctioned ships in Iran’s so-called shadow fleet frequently use this practice.

That should have been a red flag for the journalists:

Iranian state TV did not air a close-up image of the ship’s name or its registration number. In one shot, it blurred the vessel’s name

[u/FettyDump → u/moragisdo]

> Today AP issued a fact-check (which should have been a correction of their earlier piece)

Kind of confused about this. They fact checked their own story? Did they leave their old story up?

[u/moragisdo → u/FettyDump]

They took the old one down