The Islamic Republic has moved away from traditional propaganda and toward “asymmetric” information warfare. In recent weeks, AI-generated Lego animations have become one of the clearest examples of that shift.
Iranian authorities claim they did not just win the 40-day war on the battlefield, but also in the media and in the minds of the public. That claim rests on a media strategy that treats digital content production with the same level of importance as military action. AI-generated Lego videos released by a group calling itself “Explosive Media” have drawn global attention. Media outlets close to the government say these videos have broken what they describe as the global media empire’s control over the narrative.
These fictional videos use a range of Western songs to tell stories about the political, military, and moral defeat of the United States. They were reportedly created by the Islamic Republic’s “soft war officers.” Their reach has grown so much that they were even referenced at Coachella, one of America’s biggest music festivals. During a concert, the lead singer of The Strokes said: “I wanted to come with my laptop and show one of the Iranian Lego videos… They have more facts than local news. But they’re deleting them, YouTube, the government, whoever.” But behind the bright plastic visuals is a much larger system of artificial intelligence and coordinated distribution that has shifted the conflict from the battlefield to the screens of millions.
The Regime’s New Propaganda Machine
The Islamic Republic of Iran has changed its approach from traditional advertising to an “asymmetric” information war. In recent weeks, Lego animations have become a major part of that effort, functioning as an extension of the state’s propaganda machine through the use of national and religious symbols. The Wall Street Journal has called this phenomenon “Lego-ganda”—a term used for political and military messaging delivered through Lego-style visuals. The method itself is not entirely new. China used similar imagery during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia used related tools during the Moldovan elections. But the scale of the current campaign stands out.
In the latest conflict, the videos were not produced by official state broadcasters. Instead, they came from groups like “Explosive Media,” which adopted a style very different from traditional government content while still pushing symbols of victory and the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and the IRGC. The videos often mock the U.S. President using phrases common in Iranian state rhetoric, at times even comparing him to the Pharaoh. They are also produced quickly. “Explosive Media” puts out at least two videos a week. Some researchers, including Michael Kosciewicz, describe this as “Slopaganda,” combining “slop” - cheap, mass-produced AI content - with propaganda. The idea refers to content made fast and cheaply, then tailored to audience tastes so it spreads quickly across social media.
Exploiting Domestic Fissures
English-language media reports have pointed out that these Lego videos do not necessarily create entirely new narratives. Instead, they work by amplifying and recirculating divisions that already exist inside the target society. Darren Linvill, director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, says Iran has moved on from its previous media strategies and is now putting its full effort into exploiting internal American grievances. Political expert Alex Goldenberg says the foundation of Iran’s information strategy is finding “fault lines” in American political debate and making them wider. Through this approach, outlets such as Press TV try to challenge Washington’s policies using the words of American critics like Tucker Carlson or Joe Kent, while also borrowing MAGA memes and terminology to increase moral pressure on the U.S. political system.
At the same time, the use of childlike visuals to present deadly ideas has alarmed many analysts, some of whom describe the videos as “war gamification.” Lucas Olejnik, a researcher at King’s College London, told the Wall Street Journal: “The familiar aesthetics lower the audience’s guard at the exact moment the political message is delivered.” Daniel Butler, a political science professor, argues that Lego imagery makes war and suffering look “less graphic” and “more shareable,” turning horrific realities into the visual language of toys and childhood. Critics say this amounts to “sanitizing violence,” where scenes such as flag-draped coffins or bombed schools are turned into plastic blocks, reducing the apparent value of human life. Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Blase Cupich has said this kind of content contributes to “cheapening the value of human life.”
On the other hand, Mehr News Agency has openly welcomed the fact that children and their world are being pulled into this kind of messaging. It wrote: “What was once the innocent world of children has now become an arena for a battle of narratives. Lego, as an emerging medium in cognitive wars, shows that the front lines of today’s geopolitical conflicts are not drawn on the ground, but on smartphone screens and social media algorithms.”
AI and the Narrative War
The rise of artificial intelligence has given the narrative war two clear layers. The first is aimed at “proving legitimacy” to global public opinion. The second is based on “information saturation.” At that level, the goal is no longer to persuade, but to create doubt around every version of reality. When social media fills up with multiple, conflicting AI-generated versions of the same event, audiences can become exhausted by the overload and may even start dismissing real evidence as “deepfake.”
That pattern became especially visible during the 12-day war, which the Hozin Institute described as the first widespread and coordinated use of deepfakes in a military conflict. Networks linked to the Islamic Republic tried to build a narrative of “military success” before actual battlefield outcomes were announced by mass-producing fake videos showing missile strikes on Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, and Israeli fighter jets being shot down. Those three fake videos quickly drew more than 100 million views across different platforms. Tools such as Google Veo 3 were used to make the content, and many of the clips included footage from video games like Arma 3 or from unrelated conflicts. The same campaign style reappeared during the 40-day war. Reports from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said fake videos, including clips showing American planes downed over Tehran, were amplified and re-shared with help from Russian and Chinese state media.
An Attempt to Conquer Minds
“Explosive Media,” the main producer of these Lego animations, says it is a continuation of a group known as L.O.S.E.R. The group began operating in the first week of the war with a video called “Narrative of Conquest,” which portrayed the opening of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran along with Iran’s retaliatory strikes in the region. After YouTube removed the video, the group announced itself on X on February 27, writing: “We are the same independent Iranian AI content production team. The grassroots creators behind the Lego animations who are breaking the media silence. We are the voice of our own people. Be ready for more!”
In an interview with The New Yorker, a member of “Explosive Media” said the group is independent from the government and argued that the purpose of the videos is to push back against Western media narratives. As they put it: “Let’s face it; if the truth isn’t flashy, it stays somewhat lonely.” They said the team is made up of young people between 19 and 25 years old who use AI to produce two-minute videos in under 24 hours.
Although YouTube has shut down its channel and labeled it as a source of violent content, the way the material spreads is far more layered. Intelligence platform Graphika found that videos posted to the “Explosive Media” Telegram channel are re-shared on X by Tasnim News Agency and Russia’s state outlet RT within an hour, artificially boosting their reach. On social media more broadly, the pattern involves thousands of accounts posting at the same time and using similar language to manipulate platforms like TikTok and X into pushing the content into people’s feeds.
Mehr News Agency says that “the main and recurring message in these works is the narrative of Iran’s resistance against the ‘oppressive superpower’ of America,” but the Lego format has also started working against the Islamic Republic. Critics of the regime have begun using the same visual style to tell the opposite story, including in one video that shows “Mojtaba Khamenei,” the new leader of the Islamic Republic, and “Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf,” the Speaker of Parliament, entering a tunnel of horror, confronting different events, and ultimately being dragged away by the people and forced to flee.
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