How Iran turned to memes to take on Trump

The morning after Donald Trump dropped his threat to end “a whole civilisation” and agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, Tehran’s embassy in South Africa posted a taunting clip of a brown dog staring confusedly into the camera, a longtime staple of internet memes. 

“Those who were waiting last night for Iranian civilisation to be destroyed,” read the caption on the embassy’s X account. 

The post was a sign that even as the fragile truce took hold, Iran’s theocratic regime had no intention of ceasing its meme warfare.

Since the US and Israel began their bombing campaign, Iranian embassies have saturated their feeds with extremely online snark. Government-aligned accounts post AI-generated Lego animations that link the Epstein files to Trump’s war. And Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, one of its top wartime leaders, trolls the US administration, whose president was once the world’s pre-eminent tweeter.

With the regime battered, but still intact, Iran’s online army is working to spin the ceasefire as a victory. 

“There’s no question that Iran has been winning the propaganda war. The Trump administration has been on the back foot,” said Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University.

A regime-imposed internet blackout in Iran means little US propaganda is seen by most Iranians, and the White House has narrowly targeted Trump’s base with clips presenting the conflict like a video game, Linvill said.

Pro-Iran content, however, has reached big audiences in the US and globally by harnessing the language of the internet, even as it was pounded by missiles and hurled its own strikes against Israel and the Gulf.

Where the state’s domestic propaganda has used violent threats to crush dissent, its goading English-language posts often seem to mimic Trump’s own style.

When, several weeks into the war, the White House posted a video of a cartoon Trump celebrating “agriculture week” with animated bears and ducks, a pro-Iran account was scathing: “I wish we had a high-level opponent at least. #LOSERHOUSE”

“It’s talking to the US administration, in the language of the US administration,” said Niki Akhavan, a professor of media studies at the Catholic University of America and author of Electronic Iran.  

At home, by contrast, pro-regime figures on TV have warned would-be dissidents “we’ll grab you by the collar, one by one” and “make your mothers mourn for you”.

Tehran has been investing in social media propaganda for years, researchers said. In 2024, Linvill’s cyber research team identified account networks pushing divisive issues in the UK, which it found were covertly run by or on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC has funded a network of companies staffed by young digital natives fluent in English-language meme culture, researchers said, while pro-regime outfits have mastered rapid-fire AI-animated videos. When the US and Israel attacked, that network was ready to launch a storm of viral content that homed in on sensitive issues for the Trump administration.

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal — and the notion that Trump started the war to distract from revelations about his former friend — is a constant theme. Other taunts allege that Trump was tricked by Israel into waging the war and that the president and his officials are trying to profit from it. Another favourite theme is the taco, an acronym for “Trump always chickens out”.

“The Iranian aim has been to . . . attract attention, make the division inside the US even bigger and put pressure on Trump,” said Gholam Khiabany, a professor of media studies at the UK’s Goldsmiths University.

They have also catered to a different, anti-imperialist global audience with posts on Palestinian solidarity, the Vietnam war and atrocities against Native Americans.

Government-aligned production house Explosive Media has been a factory of such AI-generated videos. One video shows a Lego Trump sweating as “No Kings” protests mass outside the White House and oil prices rise, then wailing in despair when an aide tells him: “Sir, Iranians have released a new Lego-style animation”.

“The Iranians are telling a story in their communications. The US is not,” said Emerson Brooking of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank. 

Iranian embassy accounts around the world — from Zimbabwe to the UK — have embraced the meme-driven approach.

Ghalibaf, the powerful Speaker of Iran’s parliament, is one of the highest-ranking officials to break from state propaganda’s traditionally grandiose tone.

When US defence secretary Pete Hegseth in March suggested Washington had underestimated Iran’s missile capacity, Ghalibaf posted a photo of a panicked child on the verge of tears, a classic global meme.

The post has notched 2.6mn views. Researchers say the true reach of Iran’s propaganda is even wider, though difficult to quantify since their memes are reposted by diffuse and unrelated accounts.

“If you go on X right now, you’re going to see some pro-Iranian propaganda, whether or not it was actually created by the Iranian government, because it’s being shared by everyone,” Linvill said.

In the real world, Iran’s regime has suffered enormous losses, with its leader, civilians and other top officials killed. US and Israeli air strikes have also destroyed key pillars of Iran’s industrial production, as well as vital transport links, leading research centres and the engines of its export sector.

Iran has responded by attacking Israel and the Gulf, mobilising proxy militias and throwing global shipping and energy markets into disarray by in effect closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime corridor.

But given Trump’s stated aim of forcing Iran into “total surrender” and various vows to wipe out the Iranian government, Ghalibaf and other officials’ continued ability to post at all — let alone craft cutting memes — adds a second layer of defiance to each swipe at the enemy.

“If your main engagement with the war is via these Iranian videos, you basically see the US and Israel unleashing all their military might to no avail, and then Iran basically laughing at them,” said the Atlantic Council’s Brooking.

The shaky ceasefire declaration on Tuesday did little to slow Iran’s meme makers. They were soon in overdrive finding ways to cast the agreement as an Iranian victory and to ridicule Trump’s triumphant declarations.

Explosive Media instructed followers: “Use this meme.”

Below was a video of a crying Trump sat on the floor, in front of a white flag of surrender, eating a taco.