Iran's war propaganda includes memes directed at Trump

16 hours ago 2

Iran has been sending not only missiles around the region but also trolling tweets and videos around the internet. It's the latest in global diplomacy.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A new front has opened up in the war with Iran - the virtual one. Along with launching drones and missiles, Iran is now firing off memes, and President Trump is the regime's favorite target. War propaganda is as old as battles of centuries past, but as NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, in 2026, it's hitting a wider audience at a furious pace.

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AI-GENERATED VOICE: (Vocalizing).

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Trolling Trump is a new Iranian regime pastime. It shifted into high gear soon after the start of the war when the White House put out a controversial media mash-up, mixing NFL tackle highlights with missile strike footage in Iran.

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KAHN: Iran's retort features an animated Lego multiverse, where Iranian soldiers avenge miniature Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bombs.

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KAHN: The AI-generated Iranian missiles hit targets throughout the Middle East, sending boxy Lego figure scrambling - from tiny orthodox Jewish men in Israel to Saudi sheikhs in the Gulf. Iran's vast state media apparatus has taken up trolling in official communiques, too, and in English, like this recent dry delivery of Trump's trademark phrases by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari.

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EBRAHIM ZOLFAGHARI: (Speaking Persian). Hey Trump, you are fired. You are familiar with this sentence. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

KAHN: Trolling has long been in grassroots internet culture for more than 15 years, says Whitney Phillips, who teaches media ethics at the University of Oregon. But she says with the rise of Donald Trump, it's catapulted into global politics.

WHITNEY PHILLIPS: This is the language in which Trump speaks, and so this is the language in which world leaders are speaking to him.

KAHN: Like the IRGC spokesman Zolfaghari, who often invokes the president's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his notorious island.

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ZOLFAGHARI: A reminder to the corrupted island man - the ground and the map of the war (ph) is in our hands.

KAHN: Former head of Iran's National Security Council Ali Larijani also liked to troll Trump with Epstein Island references to. He was assassinated last week in a targeted Israeli airstrike. The real experience of war is getting lost in the focus-grabbing and income-generating world of memes, says Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab.

EMERSON BROOKING: It's this content and commodification of war - war becoming part of the attention economy - which I think is another very weird, discomfiting experience that so many of us are going through and feeling right now.

KAHN: According to Iranian health officials, more than 1,500 civilians have been killed there, as well as at least 14 U.S. servicemen. Brooking says Iranian propaganda is not new, but with its flair for Trump trolling, it's now successfully reaching large numbers of Americans like never before.

BROOKING: They are not used to seeing the messages of a country that the U.S. government is bombing that are directed toward them. This is quite new.

KAHN: And he says Iranians are pioneers at global propaganda, longtime adapters of social media starting decades ago. However, their AI-generated videos of late seem to be more about quantity than quality, with a lot of content generated apparently by 30-year-old state workers with a nostalgia for the late 1990s kids show "Teletubbies."

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AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Donald Trump) Boop. Boom.

KAHN: In this video, a Trump tubby is dressed in an American-flag-themed pudgy outfit as he sits on the floor of the Oval office, playing with fighter jets over a map of the Middle East. And more Legos-inspired videos, too, set to rap music.

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AI-GENERATED VOICE: (Rapping) Across the ocean, just to find your grave. Sacrifice your own boys for a lie. Listen. Yeah. Yeah. Make America Great Again.

KAHN: It ends on a cut to a black screen with white writing - your grave mistake of attacking us will be judged by history, and it won't be in your favor - and then ends with this message - thank you for your attention to this matter, the people of Iran. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Tel Aviv.

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