Alarming posts on social media claim that Iran has revealed a list of US targets it plans to attack. Along with the locations, the list also includes the populations of these cities and the reasons for targeting them, with the list consisting of cities with military bases or financial and technology hubs.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched major combat operations on Iran on Feb. 28, Iran’s counterattack has targeted Israel and U.S. military bases in Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait. The March 1 attack in Kuwait killed seven US service members.

When we conducted a search on any sources for the list, we came across an article from the International Business Times, an American online newspaper that offers news, opinion and editorial commentary on business and commerce. The article, titled “Full List of 15 US Cities on Nuclear Target If ‘World War 3’ Erupts — Is Yours One of Them?” outlines the views of Professor Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at Stevens Institute of Technology who was asked which US cities were most likely to face attack given rising geopolitical tensions and in case of a “World War 3”. The list from the article is identical to the one found in the claim, suggesting that the IBT article is the original source of the claim, and not Iran.

Curiously, the article does not mention Iran at all. Professor Wellerstein, quoted in the article, commented: ‘If the adversary is Russia and their goal is to disable US retaliation, command centres and intercontinental ballistic missile sites will be hit first. If the attacker is a rogue actor, symbolic or densely populated areas might be targeted instead”.

We have not identified any alternative source for such a list. Because the list is identical to the one published by International Business Times and attributed to Professor Alex Wellerstein, the most plausible conclusion is that this was the source. Based on our findings, the claim that Iran released a list of US cities that will be targeted is false.