April’s edition of Forbes magazine features Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who it has ranked the world’s “most powerful man”.
This is fake. Forbes has not published any such cover, or released a list ranking the world’s most powerful people since 2018.
According to an image circulating online, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been featured on the front cover of Forbes magazine as the “most powerful man” in the world. However, this is not a real magazine cover.
The image features a photo of Ayatollah Khamenei beneath the word “Forbes” written in a font similar to the one on genuine covers, with the date 15 April 2024. Overlaid text says “the most powerful man” and refers to a “definitive ranking of the most power [sic] people in the world”.
Other text on the ‘cover’ says “No hospitals”, “No schools” and “Only military bases were targeted by Iranian Attack”, which appears to refer to Iran’s attack on Israel on 13 April. On that occasion, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at the country, which were mostly intercepted, although a seven-year-old girl was severely injured by falling shrapnel and an airbase in southern Israel was “lightly hit” according to Israeli authorities. We’ve written about many other examples of misinformation relating to this attack.
The image of the supposed cover has been shared across Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) with the caption: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is featured on the cover of Forbes magazine with the caption ‘The Most Powerful Man in the World’”.
However, a spokesperson for Forbes told Full Fact: “We can confirm that the image in question is not a real Forbes cover and was never published on any of our platforms.”
The Forbes edition for April and May 2024 features a US businessman, Todd Boehly, on its cover, and Ayatollah Khamenei does not appear on any of the covers available on the publication’s website for editions as far back as February 2018. Forbes has not published a list ranking the most powerful people in the world since May 2018, and this did not include him either.
Ayatollah Khamenei has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989. He is head of state and commander-in-chief, with authority over Iran’s national and morality police, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Full Fact has previously written about other fake Forbes covers appearing to feature Hamas leaders, as well as other fake and altered screenshots imitating publications including the Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, Telegraph and the Israeli publication Haaretz.
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Image courtesy of Tasnim News Agency |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because Forbes has confirmed this is not a genuine cover published by the magazine.
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