Quicksplained: Did Jordan's Princess Salma shoot down Iranian jets headed for Israel?

Emerging from the shadows, Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones against its longtime foe Israel in a direct attack for the first time.

Despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the attack came less than two weeks after a suspected Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Iranian generals in an Iranian consular building.

An Israeli military spokesperson said that 99 per cent of the drones and missiles launched by Iran were intercepted.

Israel and Iran have been on a collision course throughout Israel’s six-month war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

The war erupted after Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two militant groups backed by Iran, carried out a devastating cross-border attack on 7 October 2023 that killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 250 others.

Amid fresh tensions between Iran and Israel, social media posts claiming that Princess Salma bint Abdullah, the third child of King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan, shot down Iranian drones that had entered Jordanian airspace en route to Israel have taken over the internet.

Here’s all we know about it.

Did the Jordanian princess really shoot down Iranian drones?

• The widely shared image featured a picture of Princess Salma bint Abdullah wearing the uniform of an air force pilot in Jordan, along with the caption, “Princess Salma of Jordan shot down six Iranian drones last night.”

• Despite her status as a pilot in the Royal Jordanian Air Force, the picture that has taken over the internet is misleading.

• However, numerous 2023 news reports featuring the same picture have proved that the widely circulated photo is from the same year.

• D-Intent Data, a news data research and fact-checking organisation, also took to X after the posts became viral to clarify that the report was false.

• “A digitally altered screenshot of a media outlet has been shared claiming that Princess Salma of Jordan shot down six Iranian drones last night. These claims are fake and fabricated. The article’s original headline reads, ‘Princess Salma of Jordan leads Air Force initiative to airdrop medical supplies in Gaza’.”

• It was published on 15 December 2023. INTENT: Propagandists are circulating digitally altered news articles to set their propaganda over the escalating conflict between Israel-Iran,” the organisation added.

• Furthermore, no government source has confirmed the claim that she took part in the operation to down Iranian drones.

• For the uninitiated, Princess Salma, a first lieutenant in the Jordanian Air Force, was a part of the contingent that airlifted supplies to a Jordanian field hospital in northern Gaza, as per NDTV.

• In 2020, the 23-year-old made history as the first female pilot in her nation.

With inputs from agencies