Front Burner - Iran and the propaganda war

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war, Iran has been publishing AI propaganda videos online trolling the United States, and Donald Trump. Conversely, the U.S. military, and Donald Trump specifically, have spent the better part of the last year publishing all kinds of war and military content and propaganda of their own. Propaganda has always been part of war. But in 2026, something about it looks and feels different: it’s shorter, funnier, more synthetic, and tailored to the algorithm.  Nicholas Cull is an authority on propaganda and has written a number of books on the subject including ‘The Cold War and the United States Information Agency.’ He’s a professor at the University of Southern California.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This week on two blocks from the White House. We're talking about our recent travels and what we've learned from them. I just got back from the Middle East after covering the Iran War. And I took what felt like the shortest trip to France ever, accompanying Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting on Friday. And I'm in Florida this week for the Artemis II Space Lunch. Join me, Katie Simpson and my fellow Washington correspondents, Paul Hunter and Willie Lowry, every week on two blocks from the White House.

This is a CBC podcast. Hi, everyone. I'm Jamie Poisson. Since the beginning of this conflict, Iran has been publishing all kinds of propaganda videos online. One video depicts a Trump-inspired telitubby character playing with toy fighter jets. Another involves an IRGC spokesperson citing Trump's own catchphrase, Hey, Trump, you're fired. One recurring subject is the president's links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the U.S.'s history of intervention around the world.

Conversely, the U.S. military and Donald Trump specifically have spent the better part of the last year publishing all kinds of war and military content and propaganda. Propaganda has always been part of war, but in 2006, something about it looks and feels different. It's shorter, funnier, more synthetic, and more algorithmic. Countries are operating like content houses, publishing competing stories and fighting for public attention. And in this war between Israel, the U.S. and Iran, all sides are now fighting for narrative dominance online. Nicholas Cole is an authority on propaganda and has written a number of books on the subject, including selling war on British propaganda in the U.S. and the Cold War in the United States Information Agency. He's also a professor at the University of Southern California's School for Communication and Journalism and directs their master's program in public diplomacy.

Today, we're talking about propaganda. what it is and how we've seen propaganda strategies working throughout history. Nicholas, hi, thank you so much for coming on to the show. You are very welcome. Before we get into some of the details of this story, why don't we begin by laying out exactly what is meant when we talk about propaganda? Sure. Well, I think right from the get-go propaganda has a problem because the word has two meanings, a kind of public meaning for the,

general population and a more technical meaning for specialists and academics. And so in popular understanding, propaganda is thrown around as a term of abuse for information that you dislike. We assume that propaganda is false information. And I found that not necessarily to be true. I think of propaganda as simply the political form of mass persuasion with advertising being the economic form of mass persuasion. Many scholars believe that propaganda is value neutral, that you can have propaganda for a cause you believe in, propaganda for a cause that you disagree with, and you have to think of it just as a tool, no better or worse than the person who's using it. I take a slightly different position. I believe that it's never a good idea to manipulate people through communication because at some point, the truth will be known and the recipient of the propaganda will receive a bump and sort of a reality bump. And I think that needs to be avoided.

I want to ask you about some of what we've seen during this war and just get a sense of what goes through your. head when you see it. So there are lots of videos that we've seen, but I'm thinking about one in particular and just, I'm just going to describe it if you could just bear with me here. It's an AI video by Iran and it features a collection of people, including an indigenous tribal chief, a child in here, Shima, Japan, a farmer in Vietnam, a young man in Yemen, a little girl in an IDP camp in Gaza, and another girl on Epstein Island. Then we see former IRGC leader, Kassam, Soleimani and Ayatollah Khomeini. The video pans between each of these two guys and shows them looking up towards the sky

and a ballistic missile carrying the Iranian flag then comes into view and we watch it as it hits a rendering of the Statue of Liberty. The screen then reads, quote, one vengeance for all. This has become known as the One Vengeance for All video. But remember, the Statue of Liberty looks like a, satanic idol with horns. And so, yeah, that's, yes, it's a very, very emotive image designed, obviously, to rally international feeling against the United States and to present a kind of a catalog of

American hypocrisy, American involvement in atrocity, American human rights abuses, and the sort of the worst things that America can possibly be associated with. You know, how effective do you think that is as a work or propaganda? I think that it's quite important to understand that propaganda doesn't tell people things. What propaganda does is it references ideas or effective propaganda, references to ideas that people already have. So you have to think about propaganda as affirming a prejudice or, and maybe even an idea that people have repressed and bringing that repressed idea to the surface. So, you know, when you're looking at American politics, you have to understand President Trump did not

invent the idea that immigrants were taking away American jobs, right? Many Americans have felt that for a long time. What President Trump did is connect a prejudice to his own political fortunes and to say, vote for me and I'll do something about it. Now, right now, what Iran is doing is connecting its fortunes in this war and to deeper ideas or doubts about the United States and its historical behavior. Everybody understands that the United States would not be where it is, were it not for mistreatment of indigenous people. But that that concept of America as a genocidal place is repressed in people's feeling towards the United States, as they emphasize other things, other experiences that they've had, like the United States, helping

them in things like development or as a wartime ally. So what Iran's trying to do is, to bring those feelings of doubt, those cross currents of the American historical presence to the surface. And I think it can do that quite effectively. But whether it actually makes allies for Iran that help it, I doubt. How do we measure the effectiveness of propaganda? Well, I think you need to look at the wider issue of the reputation of a country. and that is not built by messaging on a day-to-day basis, but on a long-term experience of a place's behavior.

And if we look at how the world feels about Iran, in fact, when people systematically measure the reputation of the most prominent countries, Iran generally comes out at the bottom. You know, the United States is criticized, but even in a time of really controversial American leadership and behavior, the U.S. doesn't drop to that level. It's always usually in the top 10 and right now in the middle of the top 20. So we're not comparing like with like, but I can see why Iran would seek to mobilize these historic grievances at this time. And, you know, a lot of propaganda right now has an audience of one, and they can counter on it enraging President Trump, who doubtless is shown these videos.

This framing of Iran is like benevolent up against an empire in the U.S. that has been built through expansion. Imperialism is one that the Islamic Republic has long relied on. But now they're using a AI to do it, right? To generate these videos. They're in this TikTok age where they can beam these images and memes and arguments into the pockets and screens of millions of people across the world. And how do you think this new AI moment changed the thinking behind the wartime propaganda that we're seeing today? Well, I just see it as more of the same, to be honest. I think things can be generated very swiftly. I don't think this is an especially effective way of

conducting propaganda. To me, the most effective AI-generated propaganda are the news photos that are bogus, where you think you're looking at something that happened and it didn't, or you think you're looking at a person who's having a particular experience, and they aren't real. But here, this is just creating emotive piece of provocation more efficiently, and maybe with more bells and whistles that would have been possible in the past.

But it's really like an animated newspaper cartoon. So to be honest, some of the material I'm looking at, I recognize from the visual history of the Boer War. You know, that there is nothing new. The basic position, we're innocent, you're a terrible bully. That continues across the ages.

You mentioned, you know, Trump is obviously, seeing these. And some of them are delivered quite humorously, right, depicting Trump or Netanyahu as Lego characters. Yes. One has Trump and Netanyahu on their knees in front of this, like, demonic religious altar that is quickly blown up by an Iranian attack. Another one uses cartoons and emojis to explain how the war has unfolded from the Iranian

perspective. And it, like, basically trolls Trump by showing Iranian cartoon jets hitting the USS Abraham Lincoln and Trump looking like angry as a straight of poor moose can't be open. And just tell me more about the rule that humor or ridicule plays in propaganda. Is the goal here persuasion or also is it humiliation? Well, I think what's happening is that it is a way of scoring a psychological success when an actual military success is really hard to find. You know, I look back in British history

and find that one of the first things that British people did when they were fighting a powerful ruler was circulate a story about their impotence or some kind of, should we say, physical abnormality relating to their reproductive capacity. So this happened with Napoleon, where he was supposed to be impotent with Hitler. There were little songs about Hitler's private parts.

And this made people feel that the enemy was more defeatable. And that's not to be dismissed, but it comes from a psychological need, not to be overwhelmed. because so much of a powerful country's propaganda in wartime is there just to persuade the adversary to give up, to feel that you cannot stand against so powerful an enemy. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed.

hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Inversely, the US has taken on kind of its own brand of new aged wartime content. And this predates the start of this war pretty quickly into Trump's second term, U.S. government accounts started to share all kinds of AI-generated videos and images of the U.S. exercising or flaunting its military power, probably not new, right? There's one from... No, but this is where we do move into something new. Because what I'm talking about, making up a rude song about Napoleon's private parts, that's something that would be done by, you know, a sergeant or somebody who's putting on a show in a theater for a crowd of drunk soldiers and maybe this song catches on. But you wouldn't expect the king or the Duke of Wellington

to share that in a formal statement. And what we're seeing in this war is that the lowest level of political communication is being shared at the highest level. So, you know, on the eve of World War II, the American comics industry went very, very anti-Nazi. You know, they created this new character in March 41, Captain America. First issue of Captain America shows Captain America punching Hitler in the face. But President Roosevelt doesn't, you know, do a fireside chat and say, I have in my hand an amusing comic book showing a Captain America punching Hitler in the face. You know, it's something that exists completely separate from American diplomacy. But right now, President Trump is sharing that kind of material.

And Pete Hegseth is sharing these videos that are triumphalist and are glorying in carnage. If Iran is not willing, then the United States War Department will continue with even more intensive. You negotiate with bombs. If you threaten Americans anywhere on. earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, and we will kill you. For a democracy going to war, it has to be done with intense explanation. And in American history, that has been done with attention to ideals, with a period of communication around the people who are the enemies, generally stressing we're fighting a bad regime and really the population of the

country are innocent or misled and we will try to minimize civilian casualties. It's almost as if Pete Hegseth thinks that Dr. Strangelove is a how-to manual, not a satire. You're talking about mass murder, general, not war? Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair must, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million kill, tops, depending on the brakes. I mean, just to maybe put it for people listening to put a couple examples to what you're talking about, you know, there's that one AI-generated video of images of NFL tackles interspersed over footage of missile strikes. I mean, and then there's even one last year where Trump shared AI images related to the prospect of a federal invasion of Chicago.

depicting the city's skyline set to fire and smoke with military helicopters playing above. What is like the consequence of this or the result of this, you think? Well, remember, you know, the argument that propaganda is connecting to the base, telling people what they already think. And I think what's happening here is that the White House is affirming an element that exists in American society. it's using images from games and creating memes. And that's not a way of communicating with the 70s, the 60-somethings.

This is aimed at 20-somethings at teens and is probably created by 20-somethings. So it's for the younger generation and it represents a memeification of war and a gamification of war. and it's a way in which the president is seeking to deliver something that is exhilarating. If he can't control the American economy, at least he can entertain the American public with a kind of super potent wish fulfillment. And, you know, this is often done through movies, which are fictional. And here he's doing it through foreign policy, which is factual, and kills real people. and I see it as being an incredibly poor taste

and something that I think will alienate many people in the world. And to be honest, I don't think this helps American foreign policy. I think it helps Chinese foreign policy because it makes China look like the adult in the diplomatic room. It's been reported in the Guardian that U.S. embassies have been instructed to coordinate with the Pentagon psychological, operations unit and Elon Musk to run coordinated campaigns against what is being described as

anti-American propaganda. Embassies have been instructed to recruit local influencers, academics, and community leaders to spread pro-America messaging that appears locally driven rather than led by the Trump administration. So I guess something different than what we've been talking about. And just what's your reaction to that? Well, that's what I would tell them to do if they'd ask me. I think that, I think it's a very sensible strategy. From a strategic point of view, empowering local voices who are credible to local audiences is a smart move. And that's how the best propaganda in the past or the best psychological strategies in the past have looked to empower local voices, not insisted on delivering the message oneself.

Are you thinking of an example there? Yeah. Well, one of the great triumphs of American public diplomacy during the Cold War was persuading Europeans to accept the deployment of cruise missiles on European territory. And to get the European public to agree to that, the U.S. did not just get President Reagan to say it was a good idea or get American generals to tour around saying it was a good idea. or get American generals to tour around saying it was a good idea. They worked with European think tanks so that in each country, a European local expert voice was saying, even though we don't want this to happen, it is a good idea.

It will block Soviet deployments and it will bring the Soviets back to the negotiating table, which was done, did happen and did make a positive difference in the in the strategic balance in the Cold War. So that's a great example of thinking of public diplomacy, not as what can I say to be convincing, but who can I empower who's convincing to the audience I need to, I need to persuade. So I can't fault the strategy, but I can fault the underlying policy, if you see what I mean. You know, I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on maybe some parallels that you see here. Much of what we're talking about here reminds me of the messages coming out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Sure. Russia had positioned itself as a counterbalance to American colonizers and frame themselves as liberators. The Soviet Union sent troops across the colonized world to fight wars of independence. Soviet newspapers talked about the lynching of teenager Emmett Till or about issues like segregation in the United States. Again, as a way, I guess, of undermining the U.S. this is moral authority, right? And just, you know, how successful were they back then? And then what comparisons are you seeing to what we're seeing today?

Well, this is a really important point for a number of reasons. I mean, the first is that the Soviet Union delivered real help and was of real value to countries seeking to decolonize. and if you travel in the global south, there's still a residual appreciation to the Soviets, which has been inherited by Russia for what happened at that time. You know, the leaders of liberation movements could be educated at places like Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow or in East Germany. And this is remembered.

this is appreciated. Next thing to say is that Soviet criticism of the United States, Soviet emphasis on American racism was a powerful propaganda gambit because it was true, because there really was an inconsistency within the American political system that the U.S. all men were created equal, and yet obviously the life experience of African-American people was substantially different to that of white people, and other minorities clearly were at a disadvantage. But the U.S. has two responses to this. The first response of the United States is to accentuate the positive, but President Eisenhower and President Kennedy also

understand the need to eliminate negative or reduce negative realities. So if we look at the archives of Eisenhower and Kennedy, both of them say, because of Soviet criticism, we have to make the U.S. a fairer country, a less racist country. So Soviet propaganda brings the issue of race relations up the political agenda in the United States. they could have been thinking about a number of other issues, but because of the scale of the Soviet global propaganda machine, the problem of civil rights in the US gets much more political attention than it, I think it would otherwise have got. So with all of this, you have two things.

You have accentuating a positive image, but also, were. to eliminate a negative, a negative reality. And right now I don't see attention to negative realities. I think that the Trump administration's emphasis is purely on asserting that things are great. I want to talk to you about the U.S.'s propaganda strategy historically. Through the Cold War, the U.S. developed its own, I've heard people talk about sophisticated means of propaganda. There was this jazz diplomacy program where famous jazz artists like Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong were unwittingly sent to places in Africa to market the greatness of American culture. Well, I would disagree with that, you see. I don't see that as being unwitting. I see it as witting,

and I see it as part of a legitimate area of diplomacy that I would call cultural diplomacy. and it is really common for artists to become part of their country's global presence. In fact, this is the case anyway. People admire Canada because of Margaret Atwood. So why shouldn't the Canadian government send Margaret Atwood overseas to talk about her novels on the taxpayer's expense? That's not propaganda. That's just a really sensible thing to do.

To me, maybe what we need to do is draw the line between propaganda and and communication and legitimate communication. And if I were drawing a line, I'd say that it is in what kind of agency do you give to your audience? Do you say to your audience, take it or leave it? Or do you say to your audience, include this in your worldview? Or are you trying to get your audience to take what you say completely and wipe out anything that might already be in their mind? So there's something about propaganda that is about getting to yes, trying to persuade the audience to surrender their thought process no matter what their existing state of mind is.

But that's a very different thing to having an international conversation, which might include making cultural forms available for a global audience and just telling people about something that exists within your culture. that is attractive. I think that the musicians themselves, people like Louis Armstrong, had a sense of where they were doing something that was moral and legitimate and helpful and would also draw the line. So Armstrong refused to go to the Soviet Union because he said that would be endorsing a government in the U.S., the Eisenhower government, that was not doing enough for African Americans.

So he used the desire of the government to mobilize African-American culture as a way to hold feet to the fire for racial reform. The U.S. also created an entire government agency devoted to shaping global opinion, the United States Information Agency. They also created broadcast outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. And would you consider that to be propaganda? So the attitude of the United States government is that when a crisis rolls along, the government needs to communicate. But when there isn't a crisis, they think that all you need to know about America, you can get from newspapers, you can get from commercially published books and in the 20th century from movies. But in times of crisis, the U.S. government has always looked to communicate for the duration of the crisis. So during World War I, for example, the U.S. set up a global communications network to distribute

ideas about a future league of nations and better forms of diplomacy and making the world safe for democracy and all these ideas that really took off around the world and then Congress closed it down. Now, as the U.S. moves into World War II, they start to set up a new network of global communication, including a international radio station, which becomes known as Voice of America. That goes on the air early in 1942. Daily, at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth. As World War II progresses, there are more and more American communication initiatives, including sending cultural attaches out to U.S. embassies.

There's a whole government department dedicated to communicating with Latin America. So this means that by the early 50s, the U.S. has multiple agencies engaged in international communication. And President Eisenhower comes along, and he can see. that this structure needs to be rationalized. So he pulls it all together into a single agency called the United States Information Agency, which, because it's one agency, costs less money, is easier to manage,

but is also designed to make the Cold War communication semi-permanent. And this is what happens. USIA lasts from 1953 through to the post-Cold War period. when true to form with the Cold War done, Congress said, well, let's save some money. And in 1999, they closed down the U.S. Information Agency. I don't think U.S.IA would have prevented 9-11, but I do think it would have helped on 9-12. It was a big mistake to impede the ability of the United

States to communicate with the world by folding communication functions into the Department of State. While the USAIA's mandate is to communicate open, open. through things like exhibitions and expo pavilions, the CIA was communicating covertly, secretly funding magazines, subsidizing journalists, and CIA had its radio station. Voice of America was the overt radio station that everybody knew was American. Radio Free Europe was a covert radio station that was supposed to be run by refugees and well-meaning American donors. It was not known to be a CIA outlet until the mid-1960s. So the way I see it, USIA was a mechanism of public diplomacy. In fact, the agency pretty much

invented the term public diplomacy, whereas the CIA was involved in propaganda and was seeking to be as manipulative as it could be. If you like, you've got a good cop and a bad cop, doing American information engagement during the Cold War. Given everything that we talked about today, how do you think people listening should come to think about propaganda today? Is it just a fact of life? And how discerning an eye should the average person develop? I think one of the mistakes that people make is that they think of propaganda as a moment in political history. And I don't believe that to be the case. I see propaganda as an enduring element in political history, something that is always there,

something that we always have to be looking for. And we always have to be thinking, well, why are we being asked this question? Why are we being told this thing? What is the agenda behind this statement? Who tells us that the world is this way? And I believe this is a fundamental part of media literacy and part of our citizenship should be to look at international images, to look at media stories, messages that come to us with political meanings, and to ask, well, what's this really about? It can be nice to be appealed to by propaganda, to be carried along in the flow of rhetoric when the music's playing and the images are pulling us along. But we need to know that it's happening and we need to be wise to the bill of goods that

we're being sold. Okay. That feels like a good place to end it. Nick, thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. Okay. You're very welcome. All right.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.