Young Iranian women walk in front of a state building covered with a giant anti-American billboard with an iconic depiction of the destroyed aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in downtown Tehran, Iran, on February 26, 2026, during the final day of Iran-US talks in Geneva.
Morteza Nicobazul | Nur Photo | Getty Images
Wartime propaganda has evolved for the social media age, and Iran is now competing with the United States to be the world’s biggest keyboard warrior.
As real-world shelling continues and casualties mount in the Middle East, both sides of the month-long war are unleashing a barrage of sarcastic, pop-culture-infused memes on the online battlefield. Iran’s new leaders have quickly taken to online combat, ramping up their memes and pointed attacks against the United States and Israel.
“What we’re seeing is not just a weapons war, but an aesthetic war,” said Nancy Snow, a professor and author who studies propaganda. “He who controls the meme controls the mood.”
Iran’s main target is President Donald Trump, with state media and government officials alike relentlessly mocking and amplifying criticism of the US leader.
Iran’s parliament, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and even President Massoud Pezeshkian have all tried to insult or undermine President Trump in messages. And they use the world’s most popular social media platforms like Facebook and X to spread the word.
The most striking example is a series of videos that appear to be AI-generated, depicting Iran’s military successes against the United States and Israel in a Lego-esque cartoon art style.
One of them shows a panicked Trump ordering an airstrike after reviewing the “Epstein file” with Satan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Another rap diss track calls President Trump a “loser” and accuses him of being Netanyahu’s “puppet” over the stock market crash, missile strikes and coffin images.
These and other messages from Iran regularly mention Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious late sex offender and former friend of Trump’s, the central figure in the conspiracy theory that the president started the Iran war to distract the public from headlines about the release of files related to the Epstein investigation.
The apparent intent of Iran’s message is not only to project defiance and counter U.S. assessments of Tehran’s military weakness, but also to undermine President Trump by highlighting some of his greatest political vulnerabilities.
“Iran is blending grievances with a meme culture, mixing Epstein, anti-war sentiment and pop visuals to penetrate a fragmented Western audience,” Snow said.
Dan Butler, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis who uses Lego in education, said the reason people use Lego to convey messages may be because of its universal appeal.
“The same reason it works for education is why actors use it for propaganda: People like Lego and will watch movies based on Lego,” Butler told CNBC via email.
“In fact, if something is violent, using Lego may make people less defensive and more likely to share it,” he says.
Bombing, Bowling, Grand Theft Auto
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has more literally fused wartime messages with internet culture.
Early in the war, official accounts shared videos splicing clips from sports, movies, and video games with actual footage of military attacks.
This visual is consistent with the relentlessly bombastic and boastful rhetoric of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who have repeatedly touted the “annihilation” of Iranian forces while assuring the United States is rapidly approaching its goal of victory.
The videos have drawn criticism, including from some former U.S. military officials, for trivializing a war that has left more than a dozen U.S. servicemen dead and hundreds more injured.
But White House officials who worked on the video say it has proven effective at attracting attention and connecting with young people. One of them told Politico that the effort is aimed at promoting the heroic work of the U.S. military “in a way that captivates audiences.”
The White House told CNBC it plans to stick to its messaging strategy.
“While traditional media is demanding an apology from us for highlighting the extraordinary successes of the U.S. military, the White House continues to highlight the many examples of Iran’s ballistic missiles, production facilities, and nuclear weapons dreams being destroyed in real time,” Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement.
The final phase of the meme war
War propaganda is nothing new, but what is being produced now and what it is trying to accomplish is unprecedented, said Roger Stahl, a communication professor at the University of Georgia who studies rhetoric and propaganda.
The Trump administration did not significantly increase its war propaganda efforts before launching the initial strikes on February 28, and there was “no subsequent or subsequent attempt to legitimize this conflict,” Stahl said.
“Instead, we received a series of memes” and “very belligerent statements from Pete Hegseth,” Stahl said. “I don’t see any discipline in the message. I think the message is all over the place.”
The purpose, he said, was to energize President Trump’s support base and gain attention.
Regarding the latter indicator, this strategy has been successful. Four videos posted to the official White House X account on March 5th and 6th had received nearly 100 million impressions as of April 1st.
Stahl said Iran’s goal is not to persuade or corral its own citizens, who are reportedly facing long-term internet outages, but rather to create a “counteroffensive” to weaken the United States on a global scale.
“There’s been a significant decline in terms of potential[US]ally support for this war, and the message from Iran is having an effect on exactly that.”
Target President Trump
It’s not all about memes and trolls. Iranian officials have also focused on the war’s destabilizing impact on the global economy and energy prices.
On Sunday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf suggested in X that President Trump’s habit of releasing updates on the war from his truth social accounts is actually an attempt to influence the stock market.
“Caution: Pre-market so-called ‘news’ or ‘truth’ is often just setup for profit taking. Essentially, it is an inverse indicator,” Ghalibaf wrote.
“Do the opposite,” the speaker advised investors. “If they go up, go short; if they go down, go long. Anything tomorrow? You know the drill.”
On Monday morning, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the United States is “in serious discussions with a new, more rational administration to end military operations in Iran.”
The S&P 500 ended the day lower as oil prices continued to rise.
On Tuesday, Ghalibaf shared a CNN article about Americans suffering from high U.S. gas prices due to the war.
“Sadly, this is what happens when leaders put others before hard-working, ordinary Americans. It’s no longer America first…Israel first,” he wrote.
