Just minutes after US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday evening that he would not destroy “an entire civilization” with a military strike against Iran, a collective of self-identified young Iranian activists moved quickly to publish their latest satirical work.
The group, calling itself Explosive Media, was putting the final tweaks on a brand-new AI-generated, Lego-inspired video focused on Trump. The clip casts a Lego Trump minifigure as colluding with Persian Gulf state leaders, shows Iranian officials slamming a giant red button marked “back to the stone age”, and even includes a scene of Trump hurling a chair at his own top US military generals.
This release marks the latest of more than a dozen videos the pro-Iran collective has put out since the outbreak of war in February, and many of their clips have racked up millions of views across major global social platforms. While Iranian government-linked accounts have posted Lego-style political videos in the past, Explosive Media’s output is far more sophisticated and tightly scripted. It is created by a team of young pro-Iranian creators who demonstrate sharp, intimate knowledge of internet culture and American society — a detail that has already led critics to accuse the group of having hidden ties to the Iranian government.
“We were almost completely certain Trump would back down; that outcome was obvious to us,” an anonymous member of the Explosive Media team told WIRED in an interview. “We’d prepared for this exact scenario and had the content ready long in advance. We only made a handful of last-minute edits before publishing it.”
The team even worked in a shoutout to the 10-point peace proposal Iran put forward as part of its recent ceasefire framework. When the video closes, a Lego Trump is slumped next to the proposal document, sobbing, clutching a white flag, and eating a taco — an inside joke referencing the acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Within hours of Trump’s public announcement, the video went live on Explosive Media’s X account and Telegram channel, paired with the caption: “IRAN WON! The way to crush imperialism has been shown to the world. Trump Surrendered. TACO will always remain TACO.”
While the Trump administration has shared its own memes that pair war footage with movie clips, those posts are largely tailored to a small niche of loyal supporters. By contrast, Explosive Media’s Lego videos have reached a far wider audience in the United States — and a surprising number of those viewers have reacted positively to the content.
“We’ve made a commitment to keep learning more every day about the American people and their culture,” the anonymous Explosive Media member told WIRED. “Throughout this process, Americans themselves have helped us — that support and guidance is still ongoing. They share impactful tips and creative ideas with us directly.”
Explosive Media launched in 2025 as a small YouTube channel, where a young Iranian man posted standalone political commentary. The content never caught on with audiences, with most videos earning just a few hundred views each. That all changed in February, when the group shifted to posting its signature Lego-inspired videos. The team writes original scripts, produces, and edits every clip using AI tools — though the group has declined to name which specific AI platforms it uses.
The videos quickly went viral across major platforms including TikTok, X, and Instagram.
“People are growing tired of the endless raw, graphic content from the conflict and are looking for content that distills key events quickly, in a tone and language they can relate to — that’s exactly what these Lego videos deliver,” Moustafa Ayad, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue who has closely tracked Iranian groups’ online war content, told WIRED. “They make an Iran-aligned framing of the conflict really accessible to Western audiences, while also tapping into existing currents of discontent within the United States at the same time. It works on two distinct levels.”
Iran has a history of using Lego-style videos for war propaganda. According to Ayad, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps first shared a link to a Lego political video back in 2024, and during the 2025 Twelve-Day War with Israel, Iranian state media released another Lego video declaring victory over Israel. But none of those older projects came close to matching the level of sophistication and cultural fluency seen in Explosive Media’s current output.
In one viral clip, the group depicts Trump ordering strikes on Iran after reviewing an “Epstein File” alongside Satan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In another, Iranian missiles inscribed with the names of everyone from Malcolm X to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein are shown launching toward the United States. In a short clip posted over the weekend, the group showed Trump holding up a victory sign while his backside was engulfed in flames. Most of the videos are paired with catchy backing tracks, including original English-language rap songs, and the group has even launched its own Spotify page to host the music from their clips.
The group publicly claims it has no official connection to the Iranian regime, but its unapologetically pro-regime messaging, paired with its reliable access to the global internet in a country that has largely cut off most citizens from the open web, has led experts to question that claim. “Given that the Iranian regime has effectively cut off global internet access to nearly everyone else inside the country, you’d have to be very close to the government to have the kind of connectivity this group relies on,” Ayad noted.
Explosive Media told WIRED it is granted internet access because it is officially recognized as a media organization, and says it has a combined 2.5 million followers across various Iranian messaging platforms.
The Iranian regime has long leveraged social media to promote its side of the ongoing conflict to non-Iranian global audiences, often blending AI generation with sharp, accessible humor. After Trump warned Iranians this week that they would soon be “living in Hell,” Iran’s embassy in Zimbabwe posted on X joking that Tehran had lost the keys to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s embassy in Tunisia shared an AI-generated video of Trump walking off Air Force One while carrying an oversized white flag.
“All of this content really demonstrates that Iran both understands what American audiences are drawn to, and has a solid grasp of how the internet — especially social media platforms — works: what gets attention, what gets people to reshare content, what drives engagement,” Ayad said. “And they’ve pulled that off perfectly with the Lego videos. I don’t think any other piece of content to come out of this conflict has been discussed and reshared as widely as these Lego clips.”
