Iran’s Trolling Caught the U.S. Off Guard. Here’s How to Push Back.

Jessica Brandt previously led the U.S. intelligence community’s efforts to mitigate foreign influence threats as the director of the Foreign Malign Influence Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Iran’s diplomatic response to President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization wasn’t a condemnation or a counterthreat. It was a scheduling request. “8PM is not so good. Could you change it to between 1 and 2PM — or if possible, 1 and 2AM?” one Iranian embassy wrote on X.

When Trump later delivered an expletive-laden demand that Tehran open the Strait of Hormuz, it responded with a joltingly deadpan quip: “We’ve lost the keys.”

These jocular retorts are not one-offs. They are part of Iran’s much broader strategy to push back on the United States in the information domain—one that encompasses satirical memes, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated videos, and sarcastic pile-ons designed to undercut U.S. soft power abroad and deepen reticence for military action among Americans at home.

This is a problem, as I pointed out in a recent New York Times guest essay. The United States isn’t well postured to address foreign influence campaigns like this—nimble, culturally savvy, and not fundamentally deceptive. And as Iran refines its approach, other threat actors are watching.

Iran’s latest playbook: memes, Lego and AI-generated content

Iranian officials have embraced ironic, absurd content that is often clearly AI-generated in their information contest with the United States, posting memes and videos riffing on internet culture and Western pop culture touchstones, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Forrest Gump. They have also taken to firing sharp, sarcastic replies directly at Trump administration statements that can become launchpads for collaborative trolling, as other accounts add on. Some analysts have characterized the style as shitposting: low-effort provocation designed to disrupt and ridicule.

Meanwhile, pro-Iranian influencers have been producing a series of popular AI videos using Lego-inspired caricatures, depicting Iranian military victory and U.S. defeat. In one, a plastic Donald Trump sweats over a ceasefire request that goes ignored. He holds a sign reading “VICTORY!”—but as the camera pans, his pants are on fire, and the sign turns out to read, “I am a loser.” Another shows Lego Trump tumbling through a whirlwind of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein while a soundtrack intones, “the secrets are leaking, the pressure is rising.” The channel behind the stunningly popular videos, Explosive Media, initially presented itself as an independent producer, but a representative has since described the Iranian regime as “a customer.”

The aesthetic marks a departure from traditional war propaganda—religious iconography, martyr posters, and anti-imperialist imagery. What has replaced it is culturally fluent, algorithmically savvy, social media content that lands as entertainment before it registers as political messaging.

Reach, of course, is not necessarily an indication of persuasiveness. Still: in the first fifty days of the conflict, official Iranian accounts on X earned more than thirty times the engagement over the previous fifty days (roughly 900 million views, 22 million likes and 76 million shares). The Lego videos have racked up tens of thousands of likes and millions of views on platforms including Instagram, TikTok, and X.

You can’t fact-check a joke: consequences for the information contest

All of this is a vivid demonstration that the current toolkit falls short, not just for technical reasons but for structural ones.

Sanctions, exposure, and disruptive cyber operations were built to address covert influence operations. They can and should be used against hidden elements of Iran’s influence network, but not against snark or satire issued openly by government officials. Likewise, deepfake detection, labeling, and watermarking policies were built to address deceptive uses of AI. They are not answers to Iran’s openly AI-enabled social media trolling.

The trolling format poses a real challenge for counter-messaging. That’s in part because you can’t fact-check a joke. Rebuttal doesn’t map onto humor, and context labels don’t neutralize a punchline. It is also because the format rewards underdogs, which the United States cannot credibly claim to be. And then there is the risk of overreaction—Washington doesn’t want to appear intimidated by a bunch of plastic toys.

That makes the format durable, and other capable actors could be taking notes. China, for example, seems to have sunset its combative, COVID-19-era “wolf warrior” approach to online diplomacy after it generated substantial pushback. Will China try its hand at this one, using AI to facilitate content production that is more conversant in the culture of its audience than Beijing has previously been able to achieve?

What Washington should do about it

Iran’s approach is working partly on its own merits—it is internet savvy, often genuinely funny, and remarkably resistant to pushback. But it is also working because the environment suits it. Right now, by many measures, U.S. soft power is being spent down faster than it is being replenished, which makes it easier for Iran to win over audiences around the world. Within the United States, Iran is pressing on fissures that run deep—around race, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and even the controversies surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files—and show no signs of closing. Polarization doesn’t just offer adversaries fodder; it makes it harder to build consensus around a coherent response.

But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do about it.

The first task is to understand the threat in real time. That means ensuring government maintains the capacity to build a holistic threat picture. It also requires more robust threat intelligence reporting from AI labs, which see behavior that downstream platforms and the government don’t. Labs observe threat actors debugging code, crafting promotional materials, and drafting performance reviews highlighting campaigns and achievements. That visibility is an asset the field is not yet fully using. More systematic public reporting would provide a higher baseline of transparency than what we currently have and sharpen the threat picture for everyone downstream. That intelligence picture should drive everything else.

The second task is to disrupt what can be disrupted. Iranian officials messaging openly on social media are one thing, but covert networks designed to obscure their origin are another. Exposure, cyber operations, sanctions, platform enforcement are legitimate tools against that infrastructure. The United States has done this before: U.S. Cyber Command  reportedly took Russia’s proxy troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, offline for a few days around the 2018 midterms. These kinds of measures won’t stop the problem, but they can impose costs, slow amplification, and force adversaries to rebuild—buying time and reducing reach.

The third task is to harness truthful information to highlight the brutality of Iranian repression. Just as Iran exploits weaknesses in U.S. defenses, the United States can exploit weaknesses in theirs: the regime’s vulnerability to open information that lays bare the cruel reality of dictatorship. Doing so could begin to weaken the regime’s grip on power at home and its soft power abroad.

The final task is perhaps the most challenging, to renew what has been eroded: the United States’ overseas public service media networks, and over time, its soft power. In doing so, Washington should resist the temptation to paper over its own challenges and shortcomings. It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, for U.S. government-funded entities to present a wide range of perspectives, including critical ones. Content that grapples honestly with our own imperfections may resonate in societies that are struggling to consolidate their own democracies. The fact that Americans are free to criticize their government is one thing that distinguishes the United States from its authoritarian challengers.

What the United States should emphatically avoid is covert influence campaigns targeting public discourse anywhere in the world. We’re not good at them, they corrode belief in the existence of objective truth on which democracy depends, and when they are exposed—and they will be—the reputational costs are likely to outweigh any short-term benefits.

Tehran is demonstrating that it has a powerful information strategy—one that is nimble, resonant, and leverages its assets. Washington needs one of its own.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author and does not imply endorsement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or any other U.S. government agency. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.