Iran prevails in the propaganda battle against Trump

The large billboards covering many buildings in the downtown areas of Iranian cities have for decades been another internal tool in an arsenal of highly ideological, dark, political communication, featuring somber images that refer to religion and death: the faces of martyrs — the fallen soldiers of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) —; the portraits of the two elderly supreme leaders, Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, whom the Islamic Republic had had until the start of the war on February 28; women covered head-to-toe in black chadors. These images reinforced the idea of the Islamic Republic that many Westerners had and still have. That of an autocracy, a fundamentalist state anchored in the past and worshipping martyrdom.

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In January, the poor image of the Iranian political system sank even further. The repression unleashed by anti-regime demonstrations covered the country in what many Iranians described as “rivers of blood”: that of the thousands of people — 7,000, according to the exiled NGO Hrana; just over 3,100 in official figures — who died in those protests, according to the UN and various human rights organizations.

Three months later, after 40 days of war and 11 days of a fragile truce, the memory of that repression has not disappeared, but it has faded. In part, because Iran seems to have made a priority of what Ali Khamenei himself — who died in one of the first Israeli bombings — defined in 2024 as the “media war.”

This priority has translated into renewed propaganda, whose star product, animation videos and/or those created with artificial intelligence (AI), is garnering millions of views on social media and giving Iran an aura of resistance, judging by the comments of numerous internet users. “Iran is fighting for all of us,” many of them assert on platforms like Instagram, X, or Telegram, as cited by Iranian anthropologist Narges Bajoghli in an analysis published in New York Magazine.

What various international media have already defined as Iran’s “viral victory” is largely explained by a generational shift. The authors of these widely disseminated audiovisual products are young Iranian creators, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) or Generation Z (1997-2012). The latter, digital natives “who learned everything they know” from the internet they now use to spread their products, explains Bajoghli, and who, in many cases, have a personal connection to the Islamic Republic.

These are — the anthropologist cites anonymous cases — children of military personnel or veterans of the Revolutionary Guard, the powerful parallel Iranian army that makes war decisions and has controlled a large media and cultural production apparatus for 40 years. What Bajoghli calls the Revolutionary Guard’s “media arm” includes production and film studios, cultural centers, university programs, and “a vast infrastructure for training successive generations of media professionals, which was created in the late 1980s.”

These young people have often grown up in privilege: their families are middle and upper class, they have traveled and attended good universities, sometimes in the United States. “They have the cultural fluency of those who have always had options,” Bajoghli describes.

For example, those who manage the production company Ajbar Enfejari (Explosive News), which started as a YouTube channel publishing videos with only a few hundred views, but in February began to disseminate content about the war, which achieved instant success. These videos, also circulated on Telegram, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and other platforms, have been re-shared millions of times and accumulate enthusiastic comments not only in the Global South but also among Western audiences. Especially among young people. Although Explosive News claims to be independent, one of its representatives anonymously admitted to the BBC that one of its videos was commissioned by the Iranian government.

These short films reach a wide audience because they use universal codes and themes such as humor and satire, but they also draw on Western references, such as rap. The most successful ones, now banned on platforms like YouTube, are made with Lego-style doll animations and are inspired by a generational reference for younger audiences: The Lego Movie (2014), which tells the story of a resistance movement seeking to stop a tyrant.

That tyrant — Donald Trump — is, in one video, an orange pig that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads on a leash like a dog. All the videos actually tell the same story: the struggle of what is presented as good — Iran — against the supposed evil — Trump, the United States, and Israel. In them, the caricature of the American president appears as a foolish character who sweats profusely and has been deceived by Netanyahu, has betrayed Americans, and is losing against the Iranians who defend the entire world against the “Epstein class,” in allusion to the pedophile millionaire Jeffrey Epstein, whose relationship with Trump is constantly recalled and who is presented as the epitome of America’s depravity.

Other clips appeal to emotions, such as the one created with artificial intelligence in which Trump and Netanyahu appear standing on a mountain ledge overlooking an abyss before some of the 168 girls killed in the American bombing of a school in Minab. Next to them are other younger girls, blonde, Western-looking, carrying a folder that reads “Epstein Files.” When the girls lower their heads, both fall into a chasm traversed by a river of blood.

The message of these products is universalist: in another video, also generated by artificial intelligence, an Iranian missile passes over a Native American, a Vietnamese child, another Japanese child, a girl in Gaza, and a minor victim of Epstein, and ends with a phrase in English: “A REVENGE FOR ALL.”

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Luciano Zaccara, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, believes that part of the success of these audiovisual products lies in that they “appeal to common sense, to the criticism of the character embodied by Trump, who is already unpopular in the rest of the world, without entering into religious or ideological issues. They simply attack his logic, his discourse, his behavior, his actions, and his tweets,” he points out.

In this way, “with Lego and rap,” Zaccara analyzes, they reach “a different audience, whether Western or from developing countries.” Above all, he emphasizes, a “young and non-ideological” audience.

Iranian propaganda, anthropologist Bajoghli analyzes, has finally “learned to speak the language of this century.” That language and the content of these videos is “what was forged in the ruins of Iraq, in the genocide of Gaza, and in every moment when Western institutions promised accountability and, instead, offered impunity.”

Errors and blocking

While the Iranian regime accumulates millions of views with its audiovisual products, Trump has made a series of communication errors: on Monday, he published an AI image in which he was depicted as a Christ-like figure at the bedside of a sick person. Iran immediately reacted with another video through its embassy account in Tajikistan. It started with Trump’s initial image, before showing the authentic Jesus Christ, who sent the president to hell with a slap.

The messages from this and many other Iranian diplomatic missions are not only helping to spread official propaganda products, but their own messages are also being widely disseminated thanks to their satirical tone and successful use of humor. In early April, after the US president posted a message on his Truth social network demanding the opening of the “f***ing” Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian diplomatic mission in Zimbabwe responded on X: “We lost the keys.” The message was retweeted 10 million times. Another Iranian embassy, in South Africa, joined the trolling of Trump with a tweet with emojis that read: “Sh…[the key] is under the flowerpot. Only open for friends.”

While this propaganda triumphs, critical Iranian voices that could counteract the Islamic Republic’s propaganda have faded into the background. On the one hand, because the war dominates media interest. On the other hand, because the Iranian regime has blocked the internet in the country for 50 days — connectivity was 2% of the usual this Friday, according to the NetBlocks organization — meaning these critical voices from within the Asian country have been largely silenced.

Abroad, the practically sole visible leader of the Iranian opposition, Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, has fallen into increasing disrepute due to his support for the war and his close relationship with Israel. The Iranian regime’s propaganda practically monopolizes the narrative.

Iran also has numerous allies to disseminate its audiovisual products. When one of its videos — or one of its embassies’ messages — is finished, official Iranian accounts, such as those of other diplomatic missions, or those close to the Islamic Republic, disseminate it. Then, the Iranian anthropologist explains in her article in New York Magazine, it is picked up by accounts related to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, from where they usually jump to Russian state or semi-state channels and, from there, to user profiles with an anti-imperialist left-wing leaning.

By then, other accounts in Global South countries — represented by opposition to the US — are already spreading it. Even protesters from the American “No Kings” movement share these videos for their anti-Trump content. In one of the videos from the production company Explosive News, at a demonstration against the American president, the Lego-style figures reflect these Americans and hold a sign with that same slogan: “No Kings.”

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