How Iran could be outmaneuvering the U.S. in the online propaganda world

As the war with Iran approaches the three-month mark, an online propaganda war is currently being waged between the United States and Iran, and global reaction suggests the Iranians are beating the Americans at their own game. “The point with all political satire is to mock those in power. It's to lampoon them because it emasculates them,” said Bret Schafer, who studies foreign propaganda as a senior director of policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Schafer said his organization conducted a study examining Iranian accounts on X in the 50 days after the war began and found there was a thirtyfold increase in the number of views and likes. For instance, when Mr. Trump posted an image of himself looking Christ-like and tending to an ailing patient, it was the Iranian Embassy in Tajikistan that responded, amassing more than 24 million views. “Diplomatic accounts never get that amount of views,” Schafer said. Some of the most popular videos come from an account called Explosive Media, where Iran's messages are displayed in Lego format. Speaking through a translator, their representative in Tehran said, “Lego is a universal language. Every person around the world can understand it without saying anything.” “It's clickable. It's shareable. People are not engaging with serious content. They're not engaging with diplomatic statements,” Schafer said. Jamie Rubin, who ran the State Department's Global Engagement Center before it was shuttered after Congress eliminated its funding in 2024, said: “This is a painful subject, and it's painful because we haven't followed the rules, the basic requirements, to build support for a military action. It has to start with a good cause, an urgent cause, a cause that people agree with. It has to include allies and then it has to have a trusted messenger, and it pains me to say this, but right now we don't have any of those qualities in this war with Iran.” Rubin added: “The entire description of our policy is now controlled by the White House. If you have to go back to the White House to get approval for every sentence, every rebuttal, every response, you've lost the game. You've lost the war, the information war.” The White House said in a statement to CBS News: “Why is CBS News doing propaganda for a terrorist regime? Under President Trump's leadership, the United States decimated the Iranian regime's military capabilities in 38 short days and is now strangling what's left of their dismal economy with one of the most successful naval blockades in history. Iran should be less concerned with winning the meme war and more concerned with making a deal to save their country.”