Iran and the US are waging a war of information junk: Lego videos vs. deepfake attacks

In early March 2026, a week after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran, the White House published a video titled «Justice the American way». It mixed real footage of the strikes with clips from movies, TV series, video games, and anime. On April 8, 2026, The Guardian ran a column examining the disinformation war between Iran and the US that broke out in its wake.

The White House video and Iran's response

According to the column, Iran and its supporters answered with their own stream of social media content. Old footage from past military conflicts was passed off as coverage of the current confrontation, and it circulated alongside AI-generated content depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf. The New York Times had already reported on February 28, 2026, that false and outdated videos were spreading after the first strikes on Iran. The disinformation wave began almost in lockstep with the military conflict itself.

Tellingly, both the official and unofficial sides of the conflict used the same technique: mixing real documentary footage with content that was knowingly fabricated or unrelated. The White House video combined real footage of the strikes with clips from Hollywood movies, TV series, video games, and anime to make it spectacular and dramatic. Iran's side, in turn, used footage from past conflicts unrelated to current events and presented it as new. In both cases, viewers got material that hit harder emotionally than a dry documentary record, but that knowingly distorted the facts on the ground.

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• Iran's response: outdated military footage and AI content showing attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf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

Why can't sources be trusted anymore?

The Guardian column builds its central argument on one observation: once it becomes impossible to verify whether a source is reliable, viewers stop choosing what is true and start choosing what is emotionally convenient — whatever reassures them, inspires them, or, conversely, enrages them. The official US side, which cuts real combat footage together with film and animation, and the Iranian side, which relies on old videos and synthetic AI content, follow the same logic. Both build a picture of events that is emotionally persuasive, not necessarily accurate.

What does this mean for media consumption?

Both sides' use of generative AI points to a broader problem with information warfare in this new era. The technology for quickly and cheaply producing convincing visual content is available not only to state propaganda machines but also to ordinary social media users, who pass that content along, often without checking where it came from. That erases the line between official propaganda and grassroots fakes, and makes it practically impossible for an outside observer to reconstruct a single reliable picture of events.

Tellingly, in just over a month — from The New York Times' first reports of false videos on February 28, 2026, to The Guardian column on April 8, 2026 — the topic went from isolated fact-checking items to full-fledged analysis as a systemic feature of information warfare. This suggests that such content is being produced and spread faster than independent media and fact-checkers can debunk it, and that verification is becoming ongoing work rather than a one-off task.

For the average viewer, this means the habit of trusting video as the most reliable kind of evidence — "if there's footage, it must be true" — no longer holds for news about armed conflicts. The Guardian column's argument essentially calls for treating any emotionally charged war video on social media with the same caution once reserved for anonymous text rumors.