Virtual Warfare: US and Iran Engage in Digital Propaganda as Real Conflict Rages

As missiles fly and casualties mount in the ongoing military conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran, both sides have launched another battle—one fought with Lego figures, Call of Duty footage, and Grand Theft Auto memes.

This digital propaganda war, which experts describe as a deliberate blurring of entertainment and deadly reality, has emerged as hundreds of lives have been lost since the United States and Israel began military strikes against Iran last month.

Among the most striking examples is an AI-generated video featuring Lego figures, recently published by Iranian state media. The disturbing clip depicts cartoon versions of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside a devil figure examining what the video labels as the “Epstein file.” The Trump character then launches an American-flagged missile at a Muslim girls’ school.

After the explosion, only a pink bag and shoes remain in the rubble—an apparent reference to the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Iran during the early days of the conflict. Iran claims at least 175 people died in that strike, which UNESCO condemned as a “grave violation of humanitarian law” and which remains under US investigation.

In the same video, Lego Iranian officials are shown retaliating with missiles and jets that destroy a British military base in Cyprus and the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia—both locations that were actually targeted by Iranian drones in the real-world conflict.

The White House has been equally controversial in its social media approach. One official clip shows a character from the Call of Duty video game series ordering an airstrike via tablet, followed by actual footage of US fighter jets taking off from carriers in the Middle East and bombing Iranian targets, all set to a Childish Gambino track.

Another White House video splices real strike footage with a Grand Theft Auto character saying, “Ah s***, here we go again.” After each strike, the word “wasted” appears on screen—mimicking what GTA players see when their character dies in the game.

The US administration has also incorporated scenes from Halo, Braveheart, and Tropic Thunder into its war montages, prompting backlash from some of the original creators. Actor Ben Stiller publicly demanded the White House remove Tropic Thunder clips, writing on X: “We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.”

Dr. Iain Overton, director of Action on Armed Violence, told The Independent, “Visual language borrowed from gaming, memes, etc., reframes violence as spectacle. I find something philosophically unsettling about AI-generated propaganda in particular. Traditional propaganda still bore some trace of human intention and of craft. But AI allows states to produce imagery that feels both hyper-real and—in equal regard—detached from reality.”

Technology consultant Dr. Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, explained that combining military strikes with computer game imagery changes how our brains process the information.

“The moment you put a Call of Duty kill animation over real strike footage, maybe you destroy that distance,” Olejnik said. He warned against dismissing these techniques as merely “childish” or “unserious.”

“This is a very serious technique,” he emphasized. “That is where attention lives. And attention is now the primary resource in any conflict, including wars.”

Olejnik pointed to Russia’s aggressive propaganda actions against its neighbors and Western Europe as evidence of how these approaches can be integrated into broader military strategy, involving “the entire State and information operators, including bots on social networks.”

The expert also highlighted how AI disinformation can have tangible diplomatic consequences, citing the Trump administration’s recent campaign to claim Greenland. AI-generated content portraying the Danish territory as American created “a genuine crisis of interpretation” in European capitals.

“Was this a real territorial threat? A negotiating tactic? Domestic performance for American audiences?” Olejnik asked. “European governments genuinely could not tell. That uncertainty had real policy consequences.”

As the physical conflict continues with no clear end in sight, this parallel propaganda war using popular media suggests a fundamental shift in how modern nations conduct information warfare—targeting attention spans rather than simply conveying messages through traditional channels.