Iran is beating the US at its own meme game, and AI is the reason. Two pro-Iran propaganda networks racked up over 1 billion views on X during the first month of the current Gulf war, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's Joseph Bodner and Krysia Sikora. The content isn't the stilted, laughable propaganda you'd expect from a theocratic state. It's good. Videos feature English-language rap tracks, Lego animations, and sharp satire that would feel at home on any American political comedy show.
The technical playbook is straightforward. Iran's propagandists are running open-source generative AI models, likely tools like Llama 3 for scripting and Stable Diffusion for visuals, hosted on platforms like Hugging Face. This lets them bypass sanctions that would block access to commercial APIs from OpenAI or Google. The result is a production pipeline that can turn breaking news into polished propaganda in near real-time. The AI models, trained mostly on Western data, give Iranian operators an inherent cultural fluency they wouldn't otherwise have. They know exactly how to mock Donald Trump (depicted with literal flaming pants) and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (shown as a vomiting drunk with crusader tattoos) because the models absorbed years of Western political humor.
Twenty years ago, Saddam's information minister Muhammad Saeem al-Sahaf became a punchline for claiming "the infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds" while his army fled behind him. Iran learned from that failure. Instead of denial and bluster, their AI-powered output leans into existing American cynicism about political leaders. The audience isn't Iranians. It's us. The content targets Western viewers and exploits genuine political divisions, positioning Trump as an enemy of ordinary people rather than trying to convince anyone that Iran is winning militarily. It's asymmetric warfare adapted for the social media age, and right now, it's working. Cyber warfare expert Dr Tine Munk calls it 'defensive memetic warfare,' analyzing the studio's output.