Lego Trump, Chibi-style short, Teletubbies: How Iran is using memes as a weapon

The US-Israeli attack on the school leaves behind a pair of little shoes and a school bag in the debris. The video then goes on to capture Iran’s response to the attack: its missiles striking US bases across West Asia, including the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia, Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, and a luxury hotel in Dubai, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, etc. Iranian soldiers charge forward. The clip ends with the line: “In remembrance of the 175 students from Minab who were martyred at the hands of the Zionist and American terrorists.”

The Lego animation got millions of views across X, Instagram and TikTok within hours. It wasn’t the first; there have been many more such videos taking on the US and Israel. Four weeks into a grinding war that has already claimed nearly 2,000 Iranian lives and at least 13 American service members, it’s as if Tehran has opened a second front online.

Also read: If US plans Iran ground war, where does it launch it from?

While drones and ballistic missiles crisscross the skies over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is also firing off dollops of wit, humour and satire in the shape of memes. The strategy isn’t new, but the execution has never been this slick. Long before the conflict began on February 28, Iranian officials understood that in the age of Trump, traditional press releases were useless. You meet the man on his own turf: memes, GIFs, short-form videos. And you make him the punchline.

Mocking the absurdity of it all

In 2018, Trump was fresh in the White House, tearing up the nuclear deal and slapping on “maximum pressure” sanctions. On social media, Qasem Soleimani, the high-ranking Iranian Major General and commander of the IRGC Quds Force from 1998 until he was killed in a US drone strike, fought back the only way he could from Tehran. Trump had tweeted a Game of Thrones-style poster warning “sanctions are coming.” Soleimani replied with his own meme: a brooding portrait overlaid with the words, “I will stand against you,” rendered in the show’s blood-red font.

Another post showed the White House exploding. It was crude, but it landed and millions saw it. Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s proxy wars, had become an unlikely Instagram troll.

Iranian state media and affiliated accounts learned early not to take Trump seriously at all. You mock him personally — his hair, his boasts, his “beautiful” deals — and you pierced the armour. Fast-forward through Joe Biden’s uneasy truce, Trump’s 2024 comeback, and the nuclear talks that failed and led to the conflict this year. The volley of memes that has come out in the recent war is funnier and more polished.

Take, for instance, the Teletubby Trump. In one clip circulating on X, a chubby figure unmistakably modelled on the US president — blond mop, American-flag pyjamas — sits in the Oval Office, gleefully slamming toy fighter jets on a map of West Asia while the Teletubby sun baby grins in the background. The absurdity is hard to miss: the most powerful man on earth reduced to a children’s TV character playing war games.

Also read: How two women writers portray Iran in International Booker Prize-longlisted novels

In a Chibi-style short from the Oda Show collective, Trump, shirtless and wearing star-spangled swim trunks, stands waist-deep in the Strait of Hormuz, jabbing a finger at a serene, robed Ayatollah Khamenei on the opposite shore. Warships bob between them like bath toys. Trump shouts threats that dissolve into cartoon sweat drops. The Iranian side doesn’t even flinch. The video, posted amid fresh tensions over shipping lanes, has been shared endlessly with captions like “When the orange man tries diplomacy.”

Perhaps the sharpest jab came after Trump’s late-March claim of “good and productive talks” with Iran, talks Tehran immediately denied ever happened. The Iranian embassy in South Africa dropped a fake WhatsApp chat screenshot. On the left: Trump (profile pic, thumbs-up emoji) messaging himself. “Hey Ayatollah... Lets (sic) talk about the Strait for sure... Ooh, thats (sic) good to hear... I will cease attacks for 5days... Thanks for your attention to this matter.”

IRGC spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari went full meta in a video statement. Switching from Persian to English mid-sentence, he stared straight into the camera: “Hey, Trump. You are fired.” There was a pause. “You are familiar with this sentence.” Then, with a ghost of a smirk, he said: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Iranian creators know their audience isn’t just domestic hardliners. They’re speaking the language of the internet to American Zoomers who might be scrolling at 2 am, to Europeans who remember Soleimani’s memes, even to Chinese netizens piling on with their own Trump roasts. The English text and the pop-culture references bypass state censors and legacy media gatekeepers. Analysts watching from Washington and London say the shift is tactical genius. Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab points out that Iran has always been ahead on social media propaganda. But the Trump era forced an evolution. “Americans are not used to seeing messages from a country the US is bombing that are directed at them,” he told NPR. “This is quite new.”

Winning the meme game

Traditional Iranian state television still churns out dour footage of missile launches and solemn funerals. The meme squads add a dash of humour in times of war. They turn the Islamic regime, which many Americans view as theocratic, into the plucky underdog slinging zingers while the superpower blusters. Renee Hobbs, a communications professor, notes in an interview: “People around the world are understanding how to get under his skin”. Trump has spent decades branding himself the ultimate dealmaker. Iran responds by showing him negotiating with his own mirror.

It’s also asymmetric warfare at its finest. The US side has its own meme factory: White House clips set to “Boom Boom,” Wii Sports sound effects over strike footage, SpongeBob declaring “Want me to do it again?” after bombing runs. Iran’s critics have called it grotesque, arguing that Iran has turned war into video-game trailer, but Iran has countered by resorting to more and more satire.

The domestic payoff is perceptible. In Iran, where blackouts and fuel shortages have hit hard, a well-timed Trump roast can feel like defiance in its own way. Young Iranians share the clips on Telegram and Instagram, laughing through the fear.

“Drink pomegranate juice so you can hit Tel Aviv more accurately,” one embassy-linked reel joked, riffing on Iranian missile accuracy claims. The humour doesn’t erase the inevitable pain and suffering inflicted by the war, but it enables to see them in a different light, teaching them the art of laughter in the dark.

Also read: ‘Martyr’ or ‘tyrant’: How world’s major media outlets see Khamenei’s killing

Not everyone is amused, though. US officials privately seethe at the sheer virality of these memes. Platforms have been slow to label or remove the content, partly because it’s clever enough to skirt hate-speech rules and partly because the algorithms reward engagement. Pro-Iran accounts like Explosive Media, a self-described “independent Iranian AI production team”, and state-affiliated embassy pages flood the zone daily. One Lego sequel even dropped an AI-generated rap soundtrack. The production pipeline is clearly well-oiled.

However, the campaign has its limits. Memes won’t stop bunker-busters or restart nuclear talks. They can’t replace the hard power Iran loses every time its air defences fail. And the regime’s human-rights record — brutal crackdowns and executions, especially of young girls and women and proxy militias — undercuts the plucky-underdog narrative for anyone paying close attention. Still, the information war matters. At a time when battlefield victories are measured as much in likes as in territory, Iran has found a way to punch above its weight.

Whitney Phillips, a media ethics professor at the University of Oregon, frames it neatly: “This is the language in which Trump speaks — and this is the language in which world leaders are now speaking to him.”

Trump, speaking from the White House, recently insisted talks were “very close” and that Iran had offered a “tremendous” gift, claims promptly slapped down by Tehran with another round of animation videos mocking him. The Lego figurines keep marching across screens. The Teletubby sits in his flag pyjamas. And somewhere in a Tehran studio, another animator is already working on the next one, ready to go viral before the next dawn prayer.

In this strange new theatre of war, the weapons are plastic bricks and punchlines. And for now, at least, Iran is winning the meme game.