Trump's Trials - Is Iran trolling Trump?

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

A new front has opened up in the war with Iran —  the virtual one. Along with launching drones and missiles, Iran is now firing off memes. And President Trump is the regime’s favorite target. War propaganda is as old as battles of centuries past — but as NPR’s Carrie Kahn reports it’s now hitting a wider audience at a furious pace.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's Terms from NPR. Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's coverage of the Trump administration, with a focus on actions and policies that take the presidency into uncharted territory. Here's the latest from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. A new front has opened up in the war with Iran, the virtual one. Along with launching drones and missiles, Iran is now firing off memes, and President Trump is the regime's favorite target.

War propaganda is as old as battles of centuries past, but as NPR's Kerry Khan reports, in 2006, it's hitting a wider audience at a furious pace. Trolling Trump is a new Iranian regime pastime. It's shifted into high gear soon after the start of the war when the White House put out a controversial media mashup, mixing NFL tackle highlights with missile strike footage in Iran. Iran's retort features an animated Lego multiverse, where Iranian soldiers avenge miniature Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bombs.

The AI-generated Iranian missiles hit targets throughout the Middle East, sending boxy Lego figure scrambling, from tiny Orthodox Jewish men in Israel to Saudi Shania, in the Gulf. Iran's vast state media apparatus has taken up trolling in official communiques, too, and in English, like this recent dry delivery of Trump's trademark phrases by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' spokesman, Abraham Zofaghori. Eitraam, you are fired. You are familiar with this sentence. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Trolling has long been in grassroots internet culture for more than 15 years,

says Whitney Phillips, who teaches media ethics at the University of Oregon. But she says with the rise of Donald Trump, it's catapulted into global politics. This is the language in which Trump speaks, and so this is the language in which world leaders are speaking to him. Like the IRGC spokesman Zulfagari, who often invokes the president's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his notorious island. A reminder to the corrupted island man, the ground and the map of the country. of war is in our hands. Former head of Iran's National Security Council, Ali Laranjani, also like to troll Trump, with Epstein Island references to.

He was assassinated last week in a targeted Israeli airstrike. The real experience of war is getting lost in the focus grabbing an income-generating world of memes, says Emerson Brooking, of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. It's this like content and commodification of war. more becoming part of the attention economy, which I think is another very weird, disconfitting experience that so many of us are going through and feeling right now. According to Iranian health officials, more than 1,500 civilians have been killed there, as well as at least 14 U.S. servicemen.

Brookings says Iranian propaganda is not new, but with its flair for Trump trolling, it's now successfully reaching large numbers of Americans like never before. They are not used to seeing the messages of a country that the U.S. government is bombing that are directed toward them. This is quite new. And he says Iranians are pioneers at global propaganda, long-time adapters of social media starting decades ago. However, their AI-generated videos of late seem to be more about quantity than quality, with a lot of content generated apparently by 30-year-old state workers, with a nostalgia for the late 1990s kids show, Telitubbies.

In this video, a Trump tubby is dressed in an American flag-themed pudgy outfit as he sits on the floor of the Oval Office playing with fighter jets over a map of the Middle East. And more Legos-inspired videos, too, set to rap music. Across the ocean, just to fight you credit. Sacrifice your own boys for a lie. Listen. It ends on a cut to a black screen with white writing. Your grave mistake of attacking us will be judged by history, and it won't be in your favor.

And then ends with this message. Thank you for your attention to this matter, the people of Iran. Carrie Khan, NPR News, Tel Aviv. And before we wrap up, a thank you to our NPR Plus supporters who hear each show without sponsored messages. course, who help protect independent journalism. If you are not a supporter yet, you can visit plus.npr.org to find out how you can get a ton of podcast perks across dozens of NPR shows, like bonus episodes, exclusive merchandise, and more.

Again, that's plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's Terms from NPR.