A war of bombs and missiles grinds on across West Asia, claiming thousands of lives and destabilizing the global economy but, on the digital battlefield, the most effective weapon of all might just be a toy steering wheel.
By resorting to satire, the Iranian Embassy in South Africa has transformed the official X account of a diplomatic mission into the sharpest, most-watched counterpunch in the information war.
With a series of savagely funny memes and AI-generated animations, the Islamic Republic is methodically dismantling the Trump administration’s public narrative, one viral post at a time.
The counteroffensive began in earnest last week when President Donald Trump floated an idea on the tarmac in Florida.
Asked by a CNN reporter who controls the Strait of Hormuz—the chokepoint for 20 percent of the world’s oil—Trump replied, “It’ll be jointly controlled. Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah is.”
The Iranian Embassy in South Africa responded within hours.
Its X account posted an image of a car dashboard. A standard steering wheel sits on the driver’s side. Bolted to the passenger side is a bright pink plastic toy steering wheel—the kind attached to a toddler’s playpen. The caption read, “The Strait of Hormuz will be controlled by me and the Ayatollah.”
The post was viewed more than 3.1 million times. One user wrote, “An official government embassy account just posted a toy steering wheel meme during an active war, and somehow this is not even the weirdest thing that happened today.” It captured something essential about the conflict: a superpower whose foreign policy has descended into chaos, lampooned by a plastic toy.
The embassy followed up with a spoof WhatsApp conversation. The screenshot showed a one-sided exchange in which Trump messages the Ayatollah: “Hey Ayatollah. Let’s talk about the strait for sure.” “Ooh, that’s good to hear.” “I will cease attacks for 5 days.” “Thanks for your attention to this matter.” The caption read, “Good and productive talks with Iran.” It was a devastatingly simple rebuttal to Trump’s repeated claims that peace negotiations were underway—claims Tehran immediately denied.
This week, the embassy struck again. As the Trump administration fired three senior military leaders—including Army Chief of Staff General Randy George—the embassy posted edited images of top U.S. military officials with crosses marked over several faces.
The caption: “The regime change happened successfully. MAGA,” followed by a laughing emoji. The implication was unmistakable: Washington’s talk of regime change in Iran was being mirrored by upheaval within the Pentagon itself.
A Viral General
The mockery is not limited to diplomatic accounts. On March 22, as Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesperson for the IRGC’s unified military command, stared into a camera. Speaking in Persian, he switched mid-sentence to English. “Hey Trump. You are fired,” he said. “You are familiar with this sentence.” Then he closed with Trump’s own signature phrase: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Zolfaghari, a previously unknown officer, became an overnight viral sensation. He had turned the president’s reality television catchphrase back on him, mocking not just a policy but the man himself. Within days, the video had been viewed millions of times.
The Parliamentarian as Day Trader
Perhaps the most audacious figure in Iran’s digital campaign is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament. A former Revolutionary Guards commander and a key overseer of the war effort, Ghalibaf has positioned himself as an unlikely financial guru.
In late March, after Trump announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure—a move that sent oil prices plunging and stock markets soaring—Ghalibaf fired back on X.
He accused Washington of using “fake news” to manipulate financial markets. Then he issued trading advice to investors around the world: “Heads-up: premarket so-called ‘news’ or ‘Truth’ is often just a setup for profit-taking. Basically, it’s a reverse indicator. Do the opposite: if they pump it, short it. If they dump it, go long. See something tomorrow? You know the drill.”
A parliamentary speaker telling global traders how to short American oil futures during an active war is a scene no fiction writer would dare invent. But the strategy is coldly calculated. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring. Ghalibaf’s message is clear: Trump’s market-moving pronouncements are unreliable, and the economic pain of this war will not be borne by Iran alone.
When a U.S. fighter jet was reported shot down over central Iran this week, Ghalibaf added another layer of sarcasm: “After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant, no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’”
The jibe cut to the heart of the administration’s shifting and often contradictory war aims.
Lego, Teletubbies, and AI Warfare
The propaganda battle has also spawned an entire genre of AI-generated content that rivals anything produced by the U.S. military’s own information operations. Pro-Iranian accounts have released viral videos depicting Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Lego-style characters, huddled over the so-called “Epstein files” before launching a missile strike on an Iranian school.
The videos are sophisticated, visually arresting, and designed to be shared. They use English text, Western pop culture references, and the disarming aesthetic of children’s toys to deliver a grim political message: that the war is a distraction, that the U.S. is overreaching, and that Iran is not backing down.
Other clips show a Teletubby-like Trump in the Oval Office, gleefully slamming toy fighter jets onto a map of the Middle East. Another shows a shirtless Trump wearing star-spangled swim trunks, waist-deep in the Strait of Hormuz, shouting threats at a serene Ayatollah. The absurdity is the point.
The U.S. administration has attempted to fight fire with fire, posting its own social media videos set to music and spliced with clips from “Call of Duty” and “Top Gun.” One White House video, featuring SpongeBob SquarePants popping up to say “You want to see me do it again?” amid footage of airstrikes, was widely criticized as trivializing war. An unnamed senior White House official told Politico, “We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude.” That quote itself became a meme.
Roger Stahl, a professor of communication studies at the University of Georgia, told The Hill that the nature of social media “favors asymmetric, low-power actors because they can produce something that will go viral if it’s clever enough.”
Winning the Narrative
The meme war is not a substitute for the real war. Nearly 2,000 Iranians have been killed, according to casualty estimates, along with at least 13 American service members. A state-imposed internet blackout has left much of Iran’s 90-million-person population disconnected from the outside world. The fighting continues.
And yet, on the digital battlefield, Iran is winning. Its messaging is designed not for its own citizens, but for Western audiences—for Americans scrolling through X, for Europeans watching YouTube, and for anyone who might question why the United States is at war again in the Middle East.
“They’re using the language that Westerners will understand because it’s for a Western audience,” Ben Ditto, a researcher who tracks online information warfare, told The New York Times.
Iran’s digital strategy is, in its own way, a mirror of the man it is fighting. Donald Trump built his political career on television catchphrases, social media insults, and a populist disdain for traditional diplomacy. Now, the Islamic Republic has adopted those same tactics—and deployed them with a wit and precision that the White House cannot seem to match.
The question for the administration is not whether it can win the war of bombs. It is whether it can win the war of jokes. And right now, the scoreboard reads: Iran, 3.1 million views. The United States: a toy steering wheel.