Iran has suffered greatly from US bombing, but it has been outmanoeuvring the superpower in the information domain.
Each of the two countries is using internet culture against the other during hostilities that began on 28 February, but Iran’s meme warfare is stronger. It is strategically coherent, well targeted and culturally universal. Iran has integrated state messaging with organic content, driving attribution uncertainty, which is itself a strategic asset.
Iran’s superior online technique is a defining, frontier warfighting function that is exposing the limits of the raw volume of the US approach.
Middle powers should take notes. Here’s what we can already learn.
The first and most important lesson from the world’s first AI meme war is to know whom you are trying to persuade and why.
The White House has been posting clips from the video game Call of Duty and memes featuring cartoon character SpongeBob Squarepants – in both cases using American sources – for a domestic base that is already inclined to back its own country. The videos aren’t designed to make a case for the war or convert opponents; they are targeting young American men, convincing them to see war through a lens of swagger and bravado. In a statement, US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that this content had generated more than 2 billion impressions.
Iran’s approach is very different, casting the same war as absurd, criminal and driven by hidden motives. Iran’s campaign has included: Lego animations mocking Western leaders and framing the war as Iran winning battles while US forces retreat; English-language rap and skateboarding videos; and posts by its embassies designed to provoke or troll the United States. These posts form Iran’s persuasion architecture, telling a story and exploiting the political vulnerabilities of their targets. They are designed to make a mockery of the US military and President Donald Trump himself, for a global audience, to undermine support for the war.
By exploiting the attention economy and packaging geopolitical narratives inside recognisable, entertaining formats, this technique reaches not only those who are already on side, but also those who have no firm opinion, would may never have encountered the messaging through conventional news, and maybe are drawn just to the entertainment.
Two different objectives, two different audiences – resulting in two information campaigns with very different levels of strategic sophistication. The US approach is a cautionary tale about volume without purpose.
The second lesson is on the use of cultural intelligence to maximise reach.
Both the US and Iran do this, but Iran’s use of Lego and rap music shows it has studied its target audience better. The Lego aesthetic is not a random choice. It signals that Iran has done its homework on what resonates with Western audiences and how they process information: through nostalgia, humour and entertainment. Iran has been investing in its strategy by testing sarcastic, humorous formats for years. Its references are contemporary and universal.
By comparison, the White House is narrowcasting. It’s using video game references that are more popular in the US than elsewhere and require cultural and gender-based familiarity. Not only that: some have argued that many of the references went out of fashion 10 years ago.
What middle powers can learn from this is the need to work on audience research, not just message development.
The third lesson is about state-organic integration, where the line between coordinated state information operations and authentic public sentiment is blurred, and the effects of attribution.
Most of Iran’s viral Lego videos bear the logo ‘Explosive News Team’, belonging to a self-described student-run and independent grassroots group. But others have attributed the same videos to the Revayat-e Fath Institute, linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Meanwhile, a campaign involving Iranian embassies’ accounts on social media platform X looks organic, with embassies from London to Harare to New Delhi riffing off each other and users joining in. But is it actually coordinated, partly coordinated or genuinely spontaneous?
Ambiguity such as this can lead to badly calibrated responses, as seen in the early days of the Ukraine war, for example.
Middle powers need the analytical infrastructure to distinguish between coordinated information operations and authentic sentiment – before they respond, not after. This means investment in open-source intelligence, platform monitoring, and analysis, along with doctrine that guides action under attribution uncertainty.
The final and often overlooked lesson is about unintended consequences. By gamifying real-world conflict, the US approach has prompted a cohort of veterans and military families – arguably some of the most patriotic in society – to push back, saying it trivialises combat and sacrifice.
Middle powers need to stress-test their own messaging with the communities whose credibility and trust they cannot afford to lose. Without this knowledge, the most damaging response to an information operation could come not from the adversary but from your own population.
The Gulf War was the first live-broadcast conflict. Ukraine was the first major disinformation conflict. Iran is the first AI-powered media-saturated narrative conflict.
The meme war isn’t a sideshow to the kinetic war; it is part of it.
Middle powers should not be asking whether they could run Iran’s campaign, but rather whether they could withstand it. Hostile information operations are a national risk. Defence, intelligence and policy agencies should be asking themselves if their information operation safeguards can cater to today’s conflict environment.
The meme war shows that strategic information dominance doesn’t require military might. Iran has a story. The US has a highlights reel. That asymmetry is the real lesson.