Claim: A viral image shows former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s mother’s house, highlighting how she lived in “simplicity”.
Fact: The image does not show Raisi’s mother or her home. In fact, the image is from 2016 and shows Raisi visiting residents from the impoverished areas of Mashhad, Iran.
On 23 May 2024, Facebook user “Verified Pakistan” posted an image of former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi sitting on the floor across from a woman. The text on the image reads, “Simplicity: Late Iran President Ibrahim Raisi When He Visited His Mother’s House.”
The post was further captioned, “The simplicity level of the mother of late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi when he visited her house.”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image search on TinEye, which led us to a now seemingly defunct website “qazd.ir” as a source. To try and access this source, we searched for archived versions of the webpage and found an archived report from qazd.ir.
The article was titled, “ بازدید تولیت آستان قدس رضوی از مناطق محروم + تصاویر ” [translation: Visit to underprivileged areas in Astan Quds Razavi + pictures], and was dated as, “۱۰ فروردین, ۱۳۹۵” in the Iranian or Jalali calendar, which is 29 March 2016 in the Gregorian calendar. According to this report, the image in the viral claim is from when the “Governor of Astan Quds Razavi visited the poor and underprivileged areas of Mashhad metropolis during an unannounced program”. In particular, it includes the viral image in a gallery of pictures showing Raisi meeting with “a group of residents” from “deprived areas of the outskirts of Mashhad”. The article cites a Persian news outlet, Quds Online, as its source.
Astan Quds Razavi, or the Holy Shrine of the Razavi Foundation, is a bonyad, or charitable trust in Mashhad, Iran, that oversees the Imam Reza shrine. In 2016, Ebrahim Raisi was appointed chairman of the institution and oversaw its operations until 2019. This was before Raisi became President of Iran in 2021.
To verify the information from the archived report, Soch Fact Check looked for stories from other credible news outlets. We came across a story (archive) by Mehr News Agency which was also published in 2016. The report includes an image gallery that contains the viral image of Raisi,and confirms that it is from the same visit writing, “حجت الاسلام و المسلمين سید ابراهیم رییسی با حضور در مناطق محروم حاشیه شهر مشهد، با جمعی از ساکنان این مناطق دیدار کرد.” [translation: Hojjat al-Islam and Muslims Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi visited the deprived areas on the outskirts of Mashhad city and met with a group of residents of these areas.]
Importantly, the agency is part of Mehr Media Group, which consists of the aforementioned outlet and The Tehran Times. The media group belongs to the Islamic Development Organisation, an Iranian religious and cultural organisation managed by the Supreme leader of Iran, and is thus considered a semi-official news outlet for the government of Iran.
Soch Fact Check also found that the viral image was recently fact-checked by النهار العربي, or Annahar Al Arabi, a Dubai-based department of the Lebanese media outlet Annahar Media Corporation. This fact-check also provided links to authentic videos of Raisi’s mother, further confirming that the image in question does not show her sitting across from Raisi.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the same image had been shared on Facebook here, here, and here.
Prominent X user @ShaykhSulaiman, who often posts false and misleading content about Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas, also shared (archive) the same claim.
Conclusion: The claim that a viral image shows former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s mother, and her simple and humble living conditions, is false. The image is actually from 2016 when Raisi visited residents from the impoverished areas of Mashhad, Iran.
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