Within the early days of the conflict on Iran, whereas the White Home was busy posting Name of Responsibility memes and AI slop of dancing bowling pins, the Iranian regime’s state media was flooding the zone with video after video of what was occurring on the bottom: Explosions over Tehran. Smoke billowing within the sky. Blood on the bottom. A Tomahawk missile touchdown on a college. Grieving mother and father burying their kids.
Solely weeks prior, the authoritarian regime had been struggling to close down all footage of the protests convulsing the nation, reducing off web entry to the surface world within the longest blackout in Iranian historical past. When Iranian dissidents managed to bypass the blackout to submit photographs and movies of what was occurring, the regime decried these photos as Zionist AI slop, even because it admitted to killing 1000’s of protesters.
Then, on February twenty eighth, the US and Israel launched a shock assault on Iran, killing 1000’s, together with civilians. Now the shoe was on the opposite foot: Because the victims of an unlawful conflict, actuality was now the very best propaganda for the Iranian regime, and Iranian state media discovered itself onerous at work attempting to inform the reality, disseminating high-definition movies of American-wrought carnage.
Previous to the assaults, it appeared as if some connectivity was returning to Iran, however as bombs fell, the blackout was as soon as once more in place. Nonetheless, there have been some early options that Iran was going to selectively raise the blackout “for many who can carry our voice additional” — a form of tiered web entry for whitelisted folks prepared to advertise, on the very least, an anti-war message. Nobody might have foreseen what would occur subsequent.
By mid-March, essentially the most dominant pressure of Iranian propaganda was of a markedly completely different tone. Little Lego minifigures dressed up as troopers as Lego planes and Lego helicopters burn in an AI-generated desert. Movies crammed in references to Jeffrey Epstein and useless Iranian schoolgirls alongside weapons and explosions. It turned out that Lego AI slop was the voice that will carry the farthest.
It turned out that Lego AI slop was the voice that will carry the farthest
The 2 nice conflicts of this decade up till this level have been in Ukraine and Gaza, and each have been accompanied by an onslaught of genuine documentation of missile strikes, shelled-out buildings, and useless our bodies. An uncanny quantity of this footage got here from civilians became unwilling conflict correspondents. For a short second in time, the Iran conflict appeared prefer it would possibly observe an identical sample, as a missile strike on a college in Minab killed 175 folks, together with schoolchildren. Images of the destroyed faculty and aerial footage of graves being dug for the kids grew to become emblematic of the unjustness of the conflict. However at the same time as these photos unfold, the web blackout remained in place. Though Minab continues to be a rallying cry for Iranian state media, its outward-facing propaganda technique began to look rather a lot like they have been simply attempting to out-shitpost the American authorities.
Iran lacked America’s army sources, but it surely had different playing cards to play. Its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz became a disaster which may completely reshape the worldwide financial system. As gasoline costs soared, Donald Trump spiraled, issuing an apocalyptic ultimatum on Reality Social demanding that Iran open the Strait lest America consign them to “residing in hell.” Days later, the nations reached a conditional ceasefire deal — one the place Iran’s calls for are the start line for negotiations. The regime’s posting sport appeared to stay rent-free in Trump’s head, with the president posting on Reality Social on Friday morning, “The Iranians are higher at dealing with the Pretend Information Media, and ‘Public Relations,’ than they’re at combating!”
The story of the ceasefire is the story of the MAGA’s insular, far-too-online bubble crashing and burning in opposition to the formidable drive that’s ocean geography. It will be far an excessive amount of to say that Iran shitposted its method into a positive ceasefire. However the Lego AI slop didn’t not work.
Lego AI slop propaganda from what might or is probably not Iranian state media: This can be a surreal sequence of phrases that ought to by no means have been written. A consultant of Explosive Media — the staff behind the Lego movies — instructed The New Yorker that it wasn’t affiliated with the regime, arguing, “Is there any approach to show that you’re not linked to Jennifer Lawrence?!”
The group additionally instructed The Related Press that it was producing from inside Iran, although it claimed, “We’re only a group of associates working voluntarily — paying for our personal web, utilizing our personal laptops and computer systems, and doing all of this ourselves.” If it’s true that they’re inside Iran’s borders, it’s extremely possible that they’ve whitelisted web entry. With out being sanctioned by the regime, it might be troublesome to have sufficient connectivity to add these movies, and virtually inconceivable to fabricate them within the first place.
“Over the previous 15 years, Khamenei made certain adequate cash, expertise, and institutional precedence flowed towards digital content material creation,” Narges Bajoghli writes in New York. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “operates or funds at the very least 50 manufacturing homes,” and essentially the most vital ones on this second are the little ones, “small, quick, and constructed for the web, made by a brand new technology coming to energy in Iran as American-Israeli bombs kill off the elder leaders — one that’s youthful, savvier, and fewer afraid of the US.”
“These freelance studios,” Bajoghli writes, “should not ‘official’ IRGC channels however relatively produce media for the broader media arms of the state, they usually obtain funding from each the IRGC and different coffers of the state and army institutions.”
Sourced at one in all these smaller manufacturing homes, Bajoghli describes how the brand new technology was already ready within the wings, able to make content material. They’d lengthy since been proficient in making “movies with quicker cuts and a way of irreverence,” however the IRGC had beforehand dismissed the movies as not being “critical sufficient.” The conflict grew to become their alternative to shine.
Whether or not or not Explosive Media is one in all these state-sponsored studios, state accounts — like these belonging to Iranian embassies world wide — have been however reposting its Lego movies. And it wasn’t simply the Lego movies that fashioned the nice Slop Wave coming from Iranian state accounts.
“American troopers, you’re combating for JEFFREY EPSTEIN,” posted the Iranian embassy in Tunis, over a clipshow of deepfaked American troopers. The Iranian embassy in The Hague mocked Trump with Pixar-esque AI slop of the president; the Iranian embassy in South Africa reheated a stale TikTok meme from 2020 to depict an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer — seemingly IRGC spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari, who makes common appearances in state media.
Those that stared too lengthy into the Lego abyss got here out sounding utterly deranged. “Iran Is Successful the AI Slop Propaganda Conflict,” 404 Media declared glumly. However what conflict was that, precisely?
Whereas the White Home was posting SpongeBob SquarePants memes for its personal base, the Lego slop clearly isn’t supposed for Iranians in Iran, says Afsaneh Rigot, a scholar and researcher who has labored on human rights points within the Center East and North Africa for a few years. The web blackout remains to be ongoing. Though Iranians are nonetheless in a position to safe tiny pockets of entry right here and there between VPNs, “they’re not going to be losing their tiny little bit of entry attempting to load one thing like” a Lego slop video.
As weird as they have been, the movies have been resonating with a sure viewers. “There’s a extremely, actually deep understanding of the social media sentiment proper now, and the worldwide sentiment,” stated Rigot. The White Home is hooked on brainrot that initiatives energy, dominance, and cruelty. “These propaganda movies have learn the sentiment that there’s a need for the other — like a struggle again in opposition to oppression.”
“Most individuals gained’t know what’s happening in Iran,” says Rigot. “However they’d have identified what’s happening in their very own neighboring nations in Latin America. Perhaps they could have identified what has occurred to their very own historic lineage and ancestors.”
Iran has “clearly been profitable” with regards to meme warfare, says Mahsa Alimardani, the affiliate director of the Expertise Threats & Alternatives program at WITNESS. “They’ve been resonating internationally.” She described visiting Morocco weeks in the past, and the way each time she talked about she was Iranian, folks would thank her for the Islamic Republic’s work. It was miserable for Alimardani, who has lengthy been crucial of the Iranian authorities. “Worldwide solidarity with the regime has by no means been larger.”
An ideal propaganda second
The Lego brainrot feels true to an actual international constituency primed to despise America for all types of causes. Iran’s regime has “created its identification round being a consultant for the oppressed, being a consultant for the worldwide majority,” says Alimardani. The conflict arrange a “excellent propaganda second for them, the place they’re really able the place they’re being attacked.” For over 4 a long time, she says, the regime’s ideology and politics have revolved across the notion that the evil American empire and Israel are victimizing Iran. Now, that message has by no means been extra on the nostril.
Iran is an advanced place — a fascist authoritarian state that meets dissent with violence, in addition to a marginalized nation whose earnest makes an attempt at self-determination have been traditionally undermined by Western governments by covert operations. On the planet of AI slop, all the pieces is blurred, smoothed out, and unserious. Brainrot is about vibes, not details. There isn’t a must grapple with the complexities of Iran when all you care about is aura farming and shitposting.
All through all of this, many state media accounts have been nonetheless, for essentially the most half, posting non-brainrot. However the tone of those accounts, too, had shifted for the reason that early days of the conflict. More moderen movies of loss of life, destruction, and wreck tended much less and fewer to be photos of atrocities inflicted on Iran. They have been as an alternative photos of downed Black Hawks and purported strikes on Tel Aviv, propaganda a lot nearer to posturing than humanitarian documentation.
“They’re attempting to take care of a picture of power, that the regime remains to be standing,” says Rigot. That is in character for the regime; for many years, projecting power and energy has been important to how Tehran speaks to the surface world. And this time, they have been talking on the identical frequency because the White Home, in a language that Trump might perceive.
The Minab strike was one of many first bombings on February twenty eighth. When genuine footage of the Minab strike circulated on X, customers accused the movies of being AI. Drone footage in Minab confirmed rows and rows of graves being dug for the victims killed within the strike, lots of whom have been schoolchildren. This footage, too, was accused of being AI-generated.
As photographs, movies, and different documentation from Minab went viral on social media, the reality grew to become Iran’s biggest asset. However telling the reality doesn’t come naturally to the Iranian state. Within the wake of the Minab strike, the Iranian embassy in Austria posted a deepfake of a kid’s backpack lined in blood; a Google SynthID watermark confirmed that the picture was a faux. Iran’s South African embassy — maybe the weirdest of its embassy accounts on X — posted a Ghiblified tribute to the younger victims of the strike.
However most of the different posts by state accounts appeared to comprise genuine media, together with movies of grieving mother and father. These accounts have been merely busy posting what served them greatest, whether or not actual or faux. And in that second, what served their pursuits occurred to be actual documentation of the conflict. Conversely, what was within the curiosity of the regime’s enemies was to sow doubt by an AI fog of conflict.
This isn’t the primary battle by which the uncertainty created by deepfake know-how has made it troublesome to know what’s or isn’t occurring, the place AI is used to generate disinformation whereas accusations of deepfaking are used to bury the reality. This occurred through the still-ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia; it additionally occurred through the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran in June 2025.
Mahsa Alimardani says that this time, the extent of AI fog she noticed was “actually fairly unprecedented.” The deepfakes fast response drive she works with at WITNESS, which helps journalists and fact-checkers to research content material suspected of being AI-generated or manipulated, discovered it troublesome to maintain up with the AI escalations they acquired.
The more and more widespread availability of AI instruments accounts for a part of this surge, however on high of that, Iran is, in Alimardani’s phrases, a “bizarre laboratory of simply so many alternative actors attempting to pursue all types of disinformation and so many alternative sorts of affect operations.” The state of Israel is understood to have used AI-generated disinformation, particularly through the 12-day conflict. One video that went viral in June 2025 confirmed an Israeli strike on the doorway of Iran’s Evin Jail, a facility identified to incarcerate political prisoners. The footage implied that the prisoners had been freed by the strike, but it surely was a deepfake. Israel had really bombed Evin, however the ugly reality was that prisoners had died within the strike.
The circulation of misleading AI propaganda by its geopolitical enemies set the stage for the Iranian regime to dismiss photos and movies of large protests in January as Zionist slop. However lengthy earlier than deepfake know-how grew to become readily accessible, the knowledge setting in, round, and originating from Iran was already deeply poisoned. The Iranian regime has been elbow-deep in affect operations for a few years; again in 2018, Fb and Twitter deleted 1000’s of accounts originating in Russia and Iran that comprised a worldwide affect community pushing disinformation. Russia partnered with Iran through the Syrian civil conflict, a messy multilateral battle that generated large quantities of on-line disinformation.
On the similar time, the Iranian authorities has used strategic web shutdowns to regulate the move of data in and in another country — any upswell of inside dissent in Iran meant a blackout was certain to observe. When the regime felt threatened by widespread adoption of platforms like Telegram or Instagram, these apps could be shut down inside Iran’s borders. The regime is properly versed in sowing doubt, spreading disinformation, and leveraging censorship.
In such a poisoned data setting, for the person individual, the worth of documentary proof declines, and it turns into even simpler for private beliefs to outweigh extrinsic proof. Iranians like Bajoghli have written concerning the infighting within the diaspora, by which the veracity of the Minab bombing is commonly a sensitive topic. Alimardani has seen folks she is aware of name the drone footage of the Minab faculty burials AI, despite the fact that it has been verified as genuine. “That may be a very emotional response, seeing the regime permit for the burials of those youngsters when like a pair months in the past the mother and father of the kids that have been killed within the protests couldn’t even get the our bodies of their kids and couldn’t really correctly mourn their kids. So, it’s like this emotional response to hypocrisy. Then you definately put AI into the combination and it simply helps you go down your individual rabbit gap.”
One thing just like the Minab case, says Rigot, requires a substantial amount of work and a while for groups of consultants to do verification and promulgate right data.
“However at that time, preliminary denial has occurred within the psyche of the entire folks that have acquired that message,” she says. “The injury is finished. The injury to the households, the injury is finished to those that have suffered, the injury is finished to these of us who’re attempting to do documentation.”
The seed of doubt is definitely planted as a result of the Iranian regime will not be reliable. “The regime are liars,” says Alimardani. “They kill folks. They compromise lives.” Someplace between 3,000 and 30,000 Iranians have been killed by the regime within the early months of this yr; within the lead-up to the conflict, Trump cited the brutal crackdown on the protests as a cause to assault Iran.
1000’s of Iranians are actually useless within the wake of the US-Israel assaults. “Two issues could be true on the similar time,” Alimardani says. “You could have horrific tragedy and you’ve got a regime utilizing that horrific tragedy for its propaganda.”
As propaganda merged with actuality, it was more and more in Iran’s curiosity to easily inform the reality, and to inform as a lot of it as potential. However after a long time of utilizing disinformation, web blackouts, platform bans, and bodily coercion to cement its energy, the Iranian authorities struggled to pivot. Shutting down the move of data has been the regime’s major modus operandi for so long as anybody can keep in mind. Spreading data, and spreading as a lot of it as shortly as potential, has not been its forte, and the dearth of expertise — and, maybe, reflexive concern of the free move of data — was exhibiting.
“You could have horrific tragedy and you’ve got a regime utilizing that horrific tragedy for its propaganda.”
On March third, an OSINT account on X started to flow into a video exhibiting Tehran’s iconic Azadi Sq., surrounded by smoke and flames on the horizon. Alimardani was notably struck by the standard of the video. Materials put out by the regime simply months prior, she stated, “appeared prefer it might have been made within the ’90s,” however state media was now “devoting the very best gear to seize the destruction that’s occurring proper now.”
In truth, the footage appeared so slick that it was instantly accused of being AI-generated.
The video is watermarked with the identify and brand of Tebyan, a state media group, but it surely was unfold principally by OSINT accounts or journalists based mostly within the West. When one Iranian state account posted the video, it was as a grainy copy that cropped out the Tebyan watermark. In truth, some Iranian state accounts look like gathering and reposting OSINT movies from a wide range of sources, behaving like social media aggregators relatively than straight broadcasting footage that they’re, theoretically, in the very best place to be gathering.
However because the conflict progressed, the sorts of posts coming from state accounts have been shifting. As a substitute of flames billowing over Tehran’s cityscape, they have been posting aerial footage of profitable strikes on US army logistics. Photographs referencing the strike on Minab are scattered all through posts from state accounts, however the bombing of Minab exists extra as an emblem — cartoons of youngsters and deepfaked dust-covered backpacks — than in documentary proof. And the truth and tragedy of Minab will not be sacred — one of many viral Lego slop movies depicts Lego Trump enraged at a Lego folder labeled “Jeffrey Epstein File,” prompting him to angrily push a button that launches a missile at a classroom of Lego schoolgirls.
It’s inconceivable to take a look at Iran’s Lego AI slop and never see the parallels to the White Home’s Pokémon deportation memes. “[T]he Lego movies have succeeded, partly, as a result of they meet the political discourse on the extent to which it has already sunk,” Kyle Chayka writes in The New Yorker.
These deranged on-line dynamics are unhealthy sufficient in isolation. When considered in context, the cursedness of all of it multiplies. Sinking to new depths has been essentially the most constant theme of the 2026 Iran conflict.
Solely per week after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, the president instructed Iranian protesters that “assistance is on its method,” a part of many early rumblings within the lead-up to the bombings. Because the American authorities violently suppressed its dissidents, it used the suppression of dissent in Iran as an excuse to invade the opposite nation. And when it did, it killed extra Iranians.
Iran has accused the US and Israel of committing conflict crimes and the worldwide crime of aggression — a sound accusation, and one that’s being made by a regime that itself has a long-standing file of atrocity crimes and different human rights violations.
“It’s miserable as a result of there are not any good actors,” says Rigot.
Stories indicated that in some locations in Iran, there have been no sirens, no designated shelters or evacuation zones. Whereas the bombings have been underway, says Rigot, “You have no idea who’s protected, you have no idea the place they’re, you have no idea precisely what’s occurring.” Throughout this era, many Iranian civilians have been in the dead of night about the place to go through the bombings. “Israel is giving out evacuation notices to a rustic that has no entry to data.”
Iranians have, through the years, turn into extraordinarily savvy with utilizing VPNs and circumventing the shutdown in numerous methods. However details about bombings operates on a special timeline than other forms of information. Nobody can afford to have an evacuation discover trickle out little by little. By locking down entry to the surface world through the conflict, Iran aggravated what was already a humanitarian disaster, even because it accused its enemies of perpetrating conflict crimes.
The Iranian regime toiled over the course of a long time to construct out its capability to regulate the web inside its personal borders. The structure it has constructed is “similar to what China has, similar to what in the meanwhile Russia is attempting to determine,” says Azadeh Akbari, a professor at Goethe College Frankfurt. “It provides [the regime] unprecedented entry to information switch and information packages between folks.” By centralizing management of the web, the regime was additionally in a position to privilege bandwidth towards native apps and platforms, shifting information and exercise away from the surface even when not in an lively web blackout.
How America has fared within the Iran conflict has way more to do with the Strait of Hormuz than the rest, but it surely’s possible that the world — notably governments of a repressive bent — will come away with all of the unsuitable conclusions about the way to wage data warfare. What Iran has constructed — a locked-down structure, a poisoned data setting, an inexhaustible slop machine — was not essentially higher or stronger than the choice. However as long as conflict is handled as a web-based spectacle, relatively than the onerous actuality of civilians attempting to suss out evacuation zones beneath a blanket of silence, Iran’s authoritarian web will likely be judged to be the superior model.
Seen in one other gentle, YouTube’s suspension of the Explosive Media channel that hosted Iran’s viral Lego slop was America’s personal response to Iran’s blackout — an American firm throttling entry to an outsider’s message. It’s an uncharitable learn, however one which ought to be thought of in opposition to the backdrop of the pressured sale of TikTok, which consolidates American web structure too, shoring up American digital sovereignty that might as soon as be taken with no consideration because of the ascendancy of Silicon Valley. On this conflict, Iran met the US the place it was, combating brainrot with brainrot, holding up an uncanny mirror to the American authorities. And like a gorilla combating with its personal reflection, America is poised to take issues farther, possibly already seeing the probabilities within the Iranian web technique.
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