In March 2026, an image (archived) circulated online that claimed to authentically show an Iranian missile with an inscription reading, "In memory of the victims of Epstein Island."
The alleged inscription appeared to refer to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's Little St. James island. Accusers say Epstein used the island to traffic underage girls for sex. The island and its visitors have been at the center of speculation about Epstein, who died in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
One X user who shared the alleged image of the inscription on an Iranian missile wrote, "'In memory of the victims of Epstein Island.' Written on an Iranian missile."
The image also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers contacted us to ask if it was real.
However, the image is fake and was generated using artificial intelligence.
While the Persian (or Farsi) inscription on the missile in the image does translate to "in memory of the victims of Epstein island,"
The coloring on the missile also appeared to be inconsistent with known visuals (archived) of a specific model cited in social media posts.
Most versions of the image circulating in March 2026 featured the watermark of a Telegram channel called "Iranian Militarism." We contacted the channel to ask whether it created the image with the inscription and await a reply.
Reverse image searches revealed that the image of the inscribed missile was actually a cropped, edited version of a separate AI fake that circulated in early February 2026 (archived, archived) — weeks before U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran killed the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and started a war with the Islamic Republic.
(Google/Snopes Illustration)
The image that
It was unclear who created the image that circulated online in February. However, a reverse image search did not reveal any credible news outlets or other reputable sources sharing it as an authentic photo of a Khorramshahr-4.
The February and March images showed a beige-colored missile with a small amount of black on the tip. Both the missile and launch vehicle matched the Khorramshahr-1 missile that Iran first unveiled in 2017, according to U.S.-based military monitoring organizations.
Photos and video from Iranian state media showed that the Khorramshahr-4 missile was either yellow and black (archived) or had an entirely black tip and used a different launch vehicle.
Because both images were AI-generated fakes, neither authentically showed a Khorramshahr-4 missile.
For further reading, Snopes has reported extensively on claims related to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.