Iran and US Wage Information Warfare: Lego Videos vs. Deepfake Attacks

In early March 2026, a week after the first strikes by the USA and Israel on Iran, the White House published a video "Justice the American way", mixing real footage of attacks with fragments of films, TV series, video games and anime — and on April 8, 2026, The Guardian published a column analyzing the ensuing information warfare between Iran and the USA.

White House video and Iranian response

According to the column, the Iranian side and its supporters responded to the publication with their own stream of content on social networks: outdated footage from past military conflicts was presented as footage of current confrontation, and along with it spread AI-generated content depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and American bases in the Persian Gulf. The New York Times reported on February 28, 2026 about the spread of false and outdated videos after the first strikes on Iran — the wave of disinformation began almost simultaneously with the military conflict itself.

It is noteworthy that both official and unofficial sides of the conflict resorted to similar tactics — mixing real documentary footage with clearly fictional or irrelevant content. White House video combined real footage of attacks with fragments of Hollywood films, TV series, video games and anime, creating an effect of spectacle and drama; the Iranian side in response used footage from past conflicts unrelated to current events, presenting them as fresh. In both cases, the viewer received material that had a stronger emotional impact than dry documentary chronicles, but at the same time deliberately distorted the factual picture of what was happening.

• Start of conflict: US and Israeli strikes on Iran — early March 2026
• White House video: "Justice the American way", mixing real footage with films, TV series, games and anime
• Iranian response: outdated military footage and AI content about attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf
• Early reports of disinformation: The New York Times, February 28, 2026
• The Guardian publication: April 8, 2026

Why can't you trust sources anymore?

The central thesis of The Guardian column is formulated through an observation: when the credibility of an information source becomes impossible to verify, the viewer begins to choose not what is true, but what is emotionally convenient — what comforts, inspires or conversely infuriates. Both the official American side, montaging real battle footage interspersed with cinema and animation, and the Iranian side, using old videos and synthetic AI content, act according to the same logic — they create an emotionally convincing, not necessarily reliable picture of what is happening.

What does this mean for media consumption?

The use of generative AI by both sides of the conflict illustrates a broader problem of information warfare in the new era: technologies that allow quick and cheap creation of plausible visual content are available not only to state propaganda machines, but to ordinary social media users who distribute such content further, often without checking its origin. This blurs the line between official propaganda and spontaneous spread of fakes from below, making recovery of a single reliable picture of events virtually an impossible task for an outside observer.

Notably, over a month or so — from the first reports of The New York Times about false videos on February 28, 2026 to The Guardian column on April 8, 2026 — the topic managed to go from isolated fact-checking notes to full-fledged understanding as a systemic phenomenon of information warfare. This suggests that the speed of production and distribution of such content outpaces the speed at which independent media and fact-checkers manage to debunk it, and the process of verification itself becomes a continuous, not one-time work.

For the average viewer, this means that the habit of trusting video as the most reliable form of evidence — "if there is footage, then it's true" — no longer works when it comes to news about armed conflicts: The Guardian column's thesis essentially calls for treating any emotionally charged military video from social networks with the same caution as previously reserved for anonymous text rumors.