{"id":36281,"date":"2026-03-26T00:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T00:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/36281\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T00:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T00:04:14","slug":"iran-targets-us-public-opinion-with-online-information-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/36281\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran targets US public opinion with online information war"},"content":{"rendered":"

When President Donald Trump\u00a0announced in a social media video on<\/a>\u00a0February 28 that the\u00a0United States\u00a0and Israel<\/a> had launched strikes on Iran, he kickstarted a war<\/a> that has engulfed the Middle East<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he\u00a0also sparked an online information war that analysts say has been\u00a0dominated by the use of AI-generated content\u00a0to spread fake news about the conflict<\/p>\n

One\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0from Clemson University in South Carolina\u00a0found\u00a0that,\u00a0within 24 hours of the US and Israel launching attacks on Iran<\/a>, dozens of social media accounts affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had begun posting Iranian propaganda about the war, some of which reached an audience of millions.<\/p>\n

Among the most widely viewed content are AI-generated videos mocking Trump \u2013 styled to reference Western media including the LEGO movies and the Teletubbies\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and AI videos and photographs claiming to show the devastation Iranian strikes have wrought on Israel and the Gulf states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe propaganda<\/a> includes memes and cartoons that aren’t meant to be perceived as real but are very good at spreading political messaging,\u201d said Darren Linvill, author of the study and co-director of\u00a0Clemson\u2019s\u00a0Media Forensics\u00a0Hub.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A screenshot of a post on X showing an AI-generated video of US President Donald Trump depicted as a LEGO figurine. \u00a9 Megatron @Megatron_ron via X <\/p>\n

\u201cThe deepfakes\u00a0portray a version of reality that\u00a0[seems]\u00a0genuine\u00a0and often paint Iran as more successful in the conflict. Both are being shared widely among communities that are critical of the war and hungry for this messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Politically divisive\u2019 <\/p>\n

The accounts analysed in the\u00a0Clemson\u00a0study had\u00a0been used previously for Iranian\u00a0influence operations \u201cdesigned to exploit regional fault lines to advance Iranian regime interests\u201d in the West by posting \u201cpolitically divisive\u201d content such as critiques of the recent US immigration<\/a> crackdown.<\/p>\n

The switch to posting war propaganda\u00a0on platforms including X, Instagram<\/a> and Bluesky suggests that Iran\u00a0quickly\u00a0overhauled its social media strategy when the war with the US and Israel began.<\/p>\n

As the conflict has spiralled over the past month, Iran has relied on both state media outlets and proxies to push its online message as a form of asymmetrical warfare with a view to targeting a US audience.<\/p>\n

Read moreMiddle East war live: Iran rejects US ceasefire plan and offers counterproposal, state TV says<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iranian regime wants to make the conflict as painful as possible for the US and Israel, and if they can target what support Trump and [Prime Minister Benjamin]\u00a0Netanyahu have,\u00a0it may ultimately\u00a0shorten the war,\u201d\u00a0Linvill said.<\/p>\n

There is fertile ground\u00a0in the United States\u00a0for messages critiquing military involvement in the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ipsos polling from mid-March found that US public opinion was \u201coverwhelmingly\u201d against the war\u00a0in Iran, with\u00a058 percent opposing US military strikes<\/a>\u00a0and 78 percent against the idea of US boots on the ground.<\/p>\n

In some cases,\u00a0the Iranian regime does not\u00a0need\u00a0to create\u00a0original\u00a0or fake content to spread its message.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clips of\u00a0the\u00a0former head of\u00a0the US\u00a0National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, being interviewed about his\u00a0resignation in opposition to the war<\/a>\u00a0were\u00a0widely shared online<\/a>\u00a0by Iranian state media.<\/p>\n

\u2018A ton of lies in a grain of truth\u2019 <\/p>\n

AI videos in\u00a0particular \u201ctravel fast and\u00a0plug into emotions that people already\u00a0have\u201d, said\u00a0Tine\u00a0Munk,\u00a0senior lecturer in criminology at Nottingham Trent University\u00a0and\u00a0a\u00a0specialist in digital warfare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey create a lot of noise, even when they are so obviously fake because it is easy to communicate complex ideas through visual storytelling using these shared cultural\u00a0references,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But many of the photos and videos gaining traction online\u00a0purport to show\u00a0events on the ground that are harder to identify as fake.<\/p>\n

Information warfare analyst Tal Hagin has been tracking these on X \u2013 a platform where\u00a0disinformation<\/a>\u00a0about the war is rife.<\/p>\n

Among them are\u00a0hundreds of examples<\/a>\u00a0of videos and images showing\u00a0Iranian attacks on Israel that are either years old,\u00a0of\u00a0attacks on different countries or are\u00a0AI-generated.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A screenshot showing a post on X debunking an AI-generated image of Iranian strikes on Tel Aviv. \u00a9 Tal Hagin @talhagin via X <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a strike in Tel Aviv on February 28th, and the videos and photos of those strikes have been used every single day to allegedly depict new strikes,\u201d Hagin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The strategy is effective, he added, because the initial attack really did happen. \u201cThen they put a ton of lies into that grain of truth, so people don\u2019t know what the truth is anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, \u201csocial media platforms are not fulfilling their commitments on labelling content and removing it if it is provably\u00a0false\u201d, said Melanie\u00a0Smith, expert\u00a0in information operations at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing content get millions of views before it’s proven to be AI and labelled as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Information battlefield\u2019 <\/p>\n

The current conflict in the Middle East is not the first time viral videos and memes have been used as a weapon of war\u00a0\u2013\u00a0they are an established\u00a0form of Ukrainian resistance<\/a>\u00a0against Russian misinformation.<\/p>\n

But the use of AI to generate wartime propaganda is a new development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This conflict is the first\u00a0time we’ve really seen AI-generated content be used very intentionally to sow chaos and confusion around what’s actually happening on the ground,” Smith said.<\/p>\n

Adding to the confusion are censorship rules restricting the flow of information out of both Israel and Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Israel, wartime censors have\u00a0prohibited the sharing<\/a>\u00a0of information deemed sensitive, such as the location of interceptor missiles.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iran\u00a0has imposed a full internet blackout, now\u00a0in its fourth week<\/a>, making it extremely difficult for outsiders to know what is happening on the ground.<\/p>\n

The result is \u201ca big information void that can be filled very quickly with synthetic content, propaganda narratives and generally chaotic\u00a0information\u201d,\u00a0Smith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran is surging forward on this \u201cinformation\u00a0battlefield\u201d,\u00a0said Munk. \u201cIt’s a broader war strategy where Iran cannot always dominate\u00a0militarily,\u00a0so it’s focused on shaping perceptions to create doubt and uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has accused Iran<\/a>\u00a0of using AI-generated \u201cfake news\u201d as a \u201cdisinformation weapon\u201d\u00a0\u2013although\u00a0the White House<\/a> shared its own heavily critiqued AI video<\/a> combining real footage of strikes in Iran with clips from action movies and video games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran has been fairly successful, certainly more successful\u00a0than the US and Israel, in reaching a broad audience and gaining more support than they might otherwise have,\u201d Linvill\u00a0said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When President Donald Trump\u00a0announced in a social media video on\u00a0February 28 that the\u00a0United States\u00a0and Israel had launched strikes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1405,4217,647,34,37,49,12112,1048,256,505],"class_list":{"0":"post-36281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-deepfake","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-propaganda","15":"tag-social-media","16":"tag-usa","17":"tag-war-in-the-middle-east"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116292554847089694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}