How Iran is winning the social media war against Trump

Since President Donald Trump launched war against Iran at the end of February, his administration has been fighting on four main battlefields. The first is the conflict itself, which has inflicted violence across the Gulf and wider Middle East. The second is economic, as Trump has frantically tried to keep the financial costs of the war from hurting him politically. The third is diplomatic, with the White House alternating between criticizing and appealing to allies who have distanced themselves from the war.

The fourth, however, is the theater where Trump typically fares best, but has been soundly bested by Iran: the realm of social media.

Since the earliest days of the war, social media has played a key role in how both the Iranian regime and the Trump Administration have attempted to control the narrative, win support, and bully each other. Arguably the first major blow in the digital sphere came when a production group tied to the Iranian government released a Lego-themed video mocking the president that quickly went viral. Between then and mid-April, the team behind the video would release roughly a dozen more, which have become so popular that they’ve been co-opted by American protesters.

Then began an onslaught of jibing Tweets from Iranian embassies around the world.

“The regime change has happened successfully,” tweeted the Iranian embassy in South Africa on April 3^rd over a photo showing the X’ed out U.S. military leaders recently fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The same embassy later posted, “No wonder some Americans say ‘I ran’ instead of ‘Iran.’”

The Iranian embassy in Thailand also got in on the fun, posting a meme of a “Trump 2028” election sign altered to read “Trump $20.98 per gallon,” as well as a mocking play on the president’s own words: “A wise man once said, ‘Open the strait or I will covfefe’. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Then following Trump’s bizarre attacks on the Pope and his widely criticized (and now deleted) post of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran came out in support of the Vatican.

“His Holiness Pope Leo XIV,” tweeted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, “I condemn the insult to Your Excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran, and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. I wish you glory by Allah.”

Even the new Ayatollah Khamenei got in on the tweet-storm, posting, “Prophet #Jesus called people to the path of God & warned against evil & oppression. Immoral, tyrannical powers sought to kill that divine messenger. Lustful, warmongering people couldn’t tolerate the religion of God, His Prophet, and the followers of His path.”

All of this comes as Trump has posted a flurry of widely condemned tweets, the most notorious being his warning that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran didn’t make a deal. And when he’s not posting genocidal threats, he’s posting lengthy rants attacking his most longstanding supporters. If Trump has intended for these posts to sway opinions to his side, it has backfired disastrously, serving to do little more than alienate a growing portion of his base. Over the course of the conflict, his approval has plummeted to historic lows.

According to Nancy Snow, a propaganda scholar who has written more than a dozen books on the subject, it should come as no surprise that Trump’s messaging has drawn criticism while Iran’s more humorous approach has prevailed.

“They’re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,” she noted. “This world order is really changing overnight and the U.S. is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody listens to.”