In the wake of the February 28, 2026 attack on Iran by Israel and the US, FactSpace West Africa’s tracking of reactions by governments in the region showed that only a handful of countries – Ghana, The Gambia and Nigeria – had formally reacted through foreign ministry statements, while the regional bloc, ECOWAS via its current president, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, had also issued a statement calling for restraint and diplomacy.
We surfaced a post that claimed the Captain Ibrahim Traore-led Burkina Faso government had formally responded to the development. The post, by La Depeche Africaine X handle, had been widely interacted with grossing over 500,000 views, 417 comments, 2,600 reposts and 9,900 likes with 555 bookmarks.
The post claimed that Burkina Faso had ordered the closure of the US Embassy in Ouagadougou and labeled the presidents of Israel and the US as terrorists. It contained an alleged RTB (Radio, Television Burkina) news clip where the host announces government’s position which was to include the dispatch of two battalions to Tehran to help the Iranians.
FactSpace West Africa investigated the specific claims made in the post and the video attached.
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We leveraged our contact in Burkina Faso, a fact-checker with Fasocheck, Ange Levi Jordan, told us via WhatsApp: “That’s false. RTB has even denied it. It’s an AI.” We also leveraged Google Gemini platform to probe the possible deepfake manipulation.
Read more in our report as published on GhanaFact. “False! Burkina Faso has NOT backed Iran in war with Israel, US; circulating video is a deepfake.“
