‘Shock and share’: Iran makes social media a key front in war against America
Sassy comebacks, sarcastic insults and glossy AI-generated videos have all been key tools in Iran’s retaliation against the United States, as social media has become a key front in the more than two-month war.
The battle playing out online demonstrates the Islamic Republic’s investment in communications and technology as a key part of its arsenal. The purpose, according to some experts, is to flood the information space with content that undermines the U.S. position and President Trump.
“Sharp power is kind of purposely trying to destabilize your opponent by making them look bad, or by using their own systems against them,” said Priya Doshi, the Hurst senior professorial lecturer in strategic communications with American University.
The videos and pithy comments also serve as a response to the Trump administration’s social media campaign employed at the beginning of the war. The campaign used AI-generated videos glorifying attacks against Iran with video game montages and splicing together American war movies and pop culture images. Those videos drew backlash in the U.S. for trivializing the costs of war.
“This administration has done a lot of unconventional things on social media,” Doshi added. “What the Iranians are doing is, they’re basically taking that and they’re turning it around and aiming it back at the United States.”
The videos and social media “clapbacks” posted on Iranian embassy accounts demonstrate a grasp of American culture and the provocative language popular on the internet.
Iran’s embassy in Thailand seized on a clip that seemed to show Trump falling asleep at the Resolute Desk during a press availability in the Oval Office. Iran’s embassy in Ghana then published a Lego version of the clip.
“He must be dreaming that he defeated Iran. Leave him sleeping,” the account posted .
After Trump announced a unilateral extension of the ceasefire, Iran’s embassy in Hyderabad, India, posted an AI-generated video depicting a frustrated Trump pretending to negotiate with an absent Iranian delegation to the tune of light-hearted carnival music.
“It goes from shock and awe, to shock and share,” said Joseph Bodnar, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Bodnar, along with his colleague, analyst Krysia Sikora, is tracking a “dramatic increase” in online engagement with Iran’s diplomatic accounts.
In the first 50 days of the war, posts from official Iranian government accounts have collectively gained 900 million views and 22 million likes, according to Sikora and Bodnar’s research.
This represents a thirtyfold increase in likes compared to the preceding 50 days and “arguably Iran’s most notable win in the war thus far,” though others may point to its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian strategy, Bodnar and Sikora assess, is to enhance Tehran’s position by undermining, belittling and mocking the Trump administration.
“It’s crucial that online audiences remember that Iran is a totalitarian country that has a lot of human rights abuses,” Sikora said. “There’s complications on both sides and propaganda should not hide the facts of war and the conflict.”
The battle for influence playing out online is the result of careful investment by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), said Matin Mirramezani, project manager for Stanford University’s Iran 2040 project.
The U.S. designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. It’s the primary military force defending the regime of the Islamic Republic and is responsible for carrying out intense repression inside Iran and its military activities abroad.
This includes funding for proxy armed forces across the Middle East — like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen — and carrying out attacks across the world.
In 2016, the IRGC established a center for digital warfare and assigned the deputy to the chief of the IRGC as the center’s director.
“That’s a big deal in and of itself,” Mirramezani said, “and the core goal was to essentially engage in this media front, to engage in this kind of soft war or soft power struggle.”
The center is called the Qorb-e Baqiat-Allah (QBA) Headquarters.
In 2023, Mirramezani said that the Iranian government’s general budget provided roughly $55 million to the QBA, which came to three times more than the spending lines for the IRGC’s main planning and construction ministry, called the Khatam-al-Anbiya Headquarters. That ministry received about $20 million.
Mirramezani said content is created as the result of a “free market,” where the QBA headquarters is likely contracting “small content shops” — benefiting from the creativity of a generation raised on the internet and drawing from a pool that is ideologically aligned with the regime.
Much of the Lego video content is being attributed to the company Explosive Media, which describes itself as an Iran-based content creation firm. Iranians inside Iran are not able to access the internet, as the government instituted a blackout at the beginning of the war.
It’s not clear how closely Explosive Media is working with the Iranian government. The firm did not return a request for an interview from The Hill.
Anonymous Explosive Media representatives have told Western news outlets that the Iranian government is a client , and in other interviews, it has said that Iranian state media has bought the rights to distribute its content. The firm told CNN that it applied for a license as a news media company, and that allows it to access the internet, which is restricted for nearly all Iranians.
Explosive Media’s team is about 10 people with an average age of 25, a representative told Drop Site News in an interview . The identity of that representative was obscured.
The anonymous Explosive Media representative told Drop Site News that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has motivated them to advocate on behalf of the Iranian government, claiming to have previously criticized the regime amid widespread protests that took place between December and January. Some criticism is tolerated in Iran although protests against the regime of the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader are strictly prohibited.
“Even if we criticize the government which we had, we are in the middle of the war and in the middle of a war we sacrifice ourself for a government who is fighting for us,” the person said.
Doshi, from American University, said the content being put out on Iran’s social media accounts can best be thought of as “slopaganda” — a term first coined last year by three researchers analyzing how new media is used to influence groups.
By using commercially relatable images like the Lego characters, and featuring hip-hop music, which are familiar to American audiences, Doshi said that the Iranian creators are using entertainment to grab people’s attention who aren’t normally tuned into international affairs.
“Then through the entertainment doorway, they’re managing to basically get these messages out that really counter the U.S. narrative in a very mocking, troll-ish, kind of way,” she said.
Some of Explosive Media’s content and other videos posted on Iranian government accounts have tapped into the most visible White House scandals for fodder. In one, Trump is seen as being controlled by Jeffrey Epstein, portrayed as the comic-book villain Venom. Other videos show Trump as a puppet to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been lampooned as a Lego-like character, showing him drunk and animating the allegations of past sexual assault and current infighting at the Pentagon. The video is accompanied by catchy rap music extolling the virtues of the Islamic Republic and portraying them as defending against aggressors.
Social media is Trump’s primary tool for communication and he often demonstrates that online videos spur him to action or reaction.
Social media clips of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro dancing to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and other examples of him being dismissive of U.S. pressure helped persuade Trump’s team to launch the January operation to capture him, The New York Times reported .
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the Iranian videos.
But as talks with Iran to end the war are stalled over an agreement addressing its nuclear program and opening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump took to his social media account to send a message.
At 4:05 a.m. EDT, the president posted an illustrative image of himself holding a machine gun, wearing black aviator sunglasses in a black suit, proclaiming “No more Mr. Nice Guy!” In the background were multiple explosions against military outposts on a mountain range.
“Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT,” he wrote.
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