Of all the wars I’ve covered in my writing career, this one has been the hardest in the sense that figuring out what’s true and what isn’t is difficult. The baseline assumption is that nothing the US says about the war can be trusted. Most of what Iran says in concrete terms about what they fired and hit can be trusted. AI images and video have proliferated, so the old “show me picture” routine doesn’t work unless y0u’re a good image analyst and willing to spend hours. Trump, of course, lies about everything. Iranian official media exists, but it’s often censored by the West so reading their official statements is often difficult.
All that said, I think it’s time for something different: a collection of propaganda videos that are Pro-Iranian. Because of all the above, it’s unclear to me if these are official, but they’re interesting nonetheless.
The first appears to be official, was published by Russian “news” outfit RT, and makes the ethical case:
Iran 🇮🇷 just released this emotional video
I don’t think they are stopping until all their objectives have been met pic.twitter.com/0jmyZbkkaY
— . (@LBGamestips) March 25, 2026
Iranian underwater drones:
🇮🇷 “The Strait of Hormuz is my territory.”
Iran’s Yazdā underwater drone introduces itself.8 meters long. Electric propulsion. Zero noise. Range of 600 km on a single charge. Operates at 200 meters depth. Carries 200 kg of explosives.
Its target today was the HMS Anson, a… pic.twitter.com/HsanKCjJF5
— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) March 25, 2026
This one made me laugh:
Iran is now releasing cartoons that Trump can understand. 😂🤣👇 pic.twitter.com/8st6rIGH98
— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) March 23, 2026
And the Korroamshahr-4 missile:
The Iranian missile “Khorramshahr-4” has become a topic of anime in the world. Be sure to watch it — it’s very beautiful. pic.twitter.com/JGWCjpjmcM
— Sprinter Press (@SprinterPress) March 25, 2026
More serious posts next, though the third video is actually a pretty accurate summary of Iranian war efforts so far.
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That first video left out, purposely I assume, Korea and Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bob
It’s maddening to try and work out what’s going on. I think that’s right about the US being liars and the Iranians being honest by and large. The censorship in the demonic entity is very strong. The public are totally on board as far as I can tell. Everyone claims every single missile was either intercepted or fell in the sea or “open areas”. To believe it one would have to believe that Iranian weapons are completely useless.
In England there’s a sense that no one is in the least bit concerned. Maybe a bit annoyed at the increase in petrol prices. Deisel is more noticeably increased.
It makes me feel that it’s more likely there will be a meltdown when the oil shortages finally become a reality.
Mark Level
Very nicely curated, Ian, thank you.
I thought the first one, on a human level, was obviously the best and most appealing. A nice survey of civilians, often children, in the ruins of places practically too numerous to list, with USA’s unceasing wars of aggression, annihilation and “regime change” across the globe. Starting with a Native American victim of course made sense.
All looking up, presumably to the Heavens, some for hope of survival, some for cleansing rain, some in mere comfort & cluelessness (the little blond girl, could’ve been at Mar-a-Lardo with a wealthy parent). It’s NOT a small world after all!! The ending was brilliant, I laughed gleefully when the Bull-Headed Statue of Slavery (gesturing to Golden Calfs, the Apostasy of Demon Worship) sinks to the bottom of New York Harbor.
I’d already seen the 2nd one of the Straits, nicely done, and indeed on the level that even a School Child thinker like Donroe Doctrine could understand. Not that his handlers would ever allow him to see it.
3rd one also good, but mainly made me think about how once the Japanese subverted and updated Western/ Disney animation, a more international style has emerged. Major shades of Dragon Ball Z (which I always thought was content-free, would tune out years back when watching Late Night Swim while traveling).
If it’s all about Narrative, which is how West has run it, alternative narrative from the Global South is about to have its day (or century) in the Sun. Which reminds me, the American Century was the 20th, 21st Century seems like it will be the Global South’s.
cc
Thanks Ian. I probably wouldn’t have seen any of those videos otherwise. They are more informative and impart more understanding than the “reporting” ( pro-“regime change” propaganda) that Western news media feeds us.
Our “news” media bombard us daily with constant repetition of the loaded brainwashing phrase “regime” – to the point that even those that have a sense that what the US-Israel are doing is wrong, have been brainwashed into never ever questioning the brainwashing that the government and leadership of Iran is somehow illegitimate and should be replaced.
That relentless brainwashing has unfortunately also affected a large segment of the Iranian diaspora in the West that failed to understand that the US-Israel intends to create sectarian and ethnic strife, thoroughly destroy and balkanize Iran, to turn it into separate, rival failed statelets like they did with formerly progressive secular Libya, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, etc. (and Afghanistan in the 70s before the US sponsored Wahhabi extremism to use as their tool since.)
Oakchair
That first video left out, purposely I assume, Korea and Iraq and Afghanistan.
—–
Yea if they had included every people the US has committed war crimes and atrocities against the video would have ran for 40 minutes
They did however include a child looking up from Epstein Island. That was a brilliant on the nose choice. They could have hit another note and had scene of a bunch of autistic, disabled, and sick children in America looking up. Drive the point home that the Empire is also slaughtering it’s own children.
I’m reminded of the Michell and Webb skit “are we the baddies?” The masses of the west are albeit slowly beginning to recognize that they are the baddies. Though this recognition often has the addendum that it’s all “Trump and cos” or Israel’s doing. The masses still haven’t escaped the brainwashing enough to understand that their entire society has been run by Trumps since at least the 60’s.
Mark Level
Thank you to Oakchair for calling out a bad actor whose racism sometimes leads to trolling, generally right out in the open, as in this case.
Someone who pretends to be Left or anti-war, but openly supports Banderist Racial Ideology, and when asked to justify his Banderism, pretends never to have heard of Stepan Bandera!! Even in the face of a share with him of the S. Bandera Wikipedia website, not exactly a “tankie” or anti-Imperialist source.
different clue
In the Trump mental-age-appropriate cartoon, I liked the part where the Trump itself was blown up.
But let us be very clear, I would NEHHH-ver EHHH-ver condone a personal up-close decapitation strike on the real Trump. I want Trump to live. And suffer.
I do hope the oil price goes so high that there is no room for it in the cartoon’s little bar-chart.
When Trump finally dies, I know what my first inward response will be.
” Hail Dorothy! The wicked witch is dead.” Or maybe just . . . ” Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch is dead.” I hope I have the nerve to actuallly say that if somebody actually askes me how I feel once the blessed event happens. Maybe I’ll warn them first by saying something like . . . ” Do you really want my college-town liberal feelings about that? Because I can share them if you want. But if you’ve heard it all before, I can keep it to myself.”
Not gonna offer my feelings about that. Gonna make them ASK me.
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Thank you to Oakchair for calling out a bad actor whose racism sometimes leads to trolling, generally right out in the open, as in this case.
I was sincere. Who is the audience supposed to be? The hearts and minds that matter are the young uns, so Iraq and Afghanistan would have been more pertinent and poignant.
I have never denied Ukraine has Nazis. So too does Russia. So too does America. Take David Duke, for example. He’s a Nazi. An admirer of Hitler, no doubt. A Banderite, for all intents and purposes and a Banderite who supports Trump. Iran has no problem with David Duke the Nazi Banderite. Iran welcomed him with open arms but ironically, no Banderites were at the Holocaust Denial conference held in Tehran yet David Duke the Nazi was.
From AI. Gasp!
David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and prominent American white supremacist, has engaged with Iranian government-sponsored platforms to promote Holocaust denial and anti-Zionist viewpoints. His most notable connection to Iran was his participation in a 2006 conference in Tehran.
2006 Holocaust Conference in Tehran
Participation: In December 2006, David Duke attended the “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust” in Tehran, Iran.
Purpose: The conference was organized by the Iranian government under then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to question the existence of the Holocaust, which Ahmadinejad had previously labeled a “myth”.
Duke’s Statements: At the conference, Duke praised Ahmadinejad for providing a platform for “Holocaust revisionism” and argued that the Holocaust was utilized by “Zionists” to justify the creation of Israel and to suppress Palestinian rights.
Context: Duke was among roughly 60 participants, which included Western Holocaust deniers, academic skeptics, and a small group of anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox rabbis.
Reactions: The conference, and Duke’s presence there, drew widespread international condemnation from the White House, the Vatican, and European leaders.
Ideological Alignment
Anti-Zionism: Duke’s collaboration with Iranian platforms stems from shared anti-Zionist views, with both accusing Israel of manipulating international sentiment through the Holocaust.
Media Focus: Duke has argued that the “Zionist media” controls the narrative in the West, justifying his engagement with Iranian media to express his views.
While Duke has engaged with Iranian state-supported events, his participation was part of a broader, international group of fringe figures and Holocaust deniers invited to Tehran at that time.
spud
i personally am convinced, just as the wall street parasites and leeches are convinced that the war is almost over, and will not affect the western worlds economy, and that trump is negotiating and winning every thing the leeches and parasites want.
here is where i part with the delusions of thrump and the wall street parasites, yes trump is negotiating with iranians, the iranian version of jaun guaido. and yes, the western worlds economy is headed into a dumpster fire.
different clue
@spud,
Are you saying the TrumpAdmin has found some ‘Miami Cuban’ Iranians to negotiate with? Has the TrumpAdmin found its ” Ahmadpour Chalabijad”?
spud
different clue:
yep:)
mago
Are you focking serious L&S?
Who gives a good goddamn what David Duke or anyone else thinks?
Influencers—gimme a break.
But yeah, rail on, shake a fist at the sky and tell those punks to get off your unmown lawn. Sometimes ya gotta wonder.
Feral Finster
Every country has nazis. In Russia they are tossed in prison.
In Ukraine, they get their own military units and get to make policy. It’s like the DoD were to outsource its dirty work to The Proud Boys.
There is a reason that David Duke and others like him flocked to Ukraine.
shagggz
L&S, for you to collapse the difference between states that were/are/fought alongside Nazis and those that defeated these same states because they all “have some Nazis” is beyond retarded.
someofparts
You know, a couple of years ago I started watching Turkish telenovas because I was just fed up with the lying liars in US media. I figured I would watch west Asian media instead.
The thing is this, I take the media skill a nation displays as one index of that nation’s development. After all, media is a wealthy, high-tech, collaborative enterprise. If a nation can produce media as polished as what I am accustomed to from US media, I think that is a sign of high technical capacity.
So it has been gratifying to see how good the Turks are at it. Now Ian is sharing these videos from Iran and I am having the same reactions I have had to the excellence of Turkish media. Those videos are a hoot and a hint at the real level of sophistication in Iran.
Speaking of the real level of sophistication in Iran, am I the only one who finds it a bit disconcerting that my fellow US citizens seem to have no idea at all about what is coming our way? I think the couple of months I will spend hunkered down in my little apartment recovering from surgery will be a good time to lay low until we see how my fellow citizens will react when they inevitably realize the truth of our predicament. I’m figuring that two months will we plenty of time for our real circumstances to become clear. How will they react when this happens? I don’t know, but I plan to be very cautious.
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There is a reason that David Duke and others like him flocked to Ukraine.
Just as many flock to Russia and support Russia and idolize Putin. They view Russia as white supremacist and Russia does nothing to dissuade them of that notion and in fact, quite the contrary.
The point here is, they also flocked to Iran and Iran didn’t put them in jail. Putin may put some in jail but not others. It all depends. Let’s never forgot, according to Russian propaganda, Putin plays eight dimensional chess afterall.
What we do know is, Putin and Russia totally support Nazis in other target countries in Europe and in North America, especially America so get out of my face with the disingenuous concern trolling related to Nazis in Ukraine.
I’m not the hypocrite here. Apparently, many of you are. The principle here is, no aggressive war against other countries. Full stop. I opposed the Iraq War and Afghanistan War in real time before they happened and when they were transpiring. I opposed what was done in Libya and Syria. I opposed and oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine despite Ukraine’s many shortcomings. I oppose America’s/Israel’s/The Gulf State’s war on Iran despite all of Iran’s shortcomings and I opposed and oppose America’s kidnapping of Maduro and its pseudo occupation of Venezuela.
For me, ALL OF IT is a matter of principle. It’s about values. No exceptions. But not so with many of you. Many of you engage in double standards and then transform into pretzels twisting yourselves in knots trying to justify your double standard hypocrisy.
This has always been a problem for those with above average intelligence. That excess of intelligence is all too often used to cleverly justify contradictory, hypocritical positions rather than using it for more constructive and worthwhile endeavors.
Fyi, to Ian, thanks for the videos. I got a chuckle out of them and appreciate them immensely.
While we are on the subject of what was selected to include in that one particular video, the first in the series, and who the target audience was, the author left out America’s greatest sin of all — slavery. I didn’t see a little black slave girl forlorn and despondent and hopeless. Curious, that. Could it be, this is just a theory, that Iran knows the audience, or part of the target audience, is the David Dukes of the world and therefore they would frown upon picking that scab? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Only the author and/or authors, that’s who. However, if that was the thinking and the theory is correct, well, who are the real racists?
Feral Finster
narrator voice: David Duke went to Ukraine. Not Russia.
Moreover, Russia is arguably the most multicultural society outside of India or Indonesia, with national minorities offered broad rights, including right 5to local autonomy, right to education and to petition the government in local languages, etc..
Contrast with the aggressively centralizing and galicianizing Ukraine, trying to force people into a language that many Ukrainians do not speak.
And I haven’t even gotten started on the Ukrainian habit of adopting Nazi symbols, naming military units after SS units, declaring Nazi collaborators to be national heroes and questioning this status to be a crime, etc..
Feral Finster
And, of course L&S ignores my central point – in Russia, Nazis get tossed in prison. In Ukraine, they get to make policy.
Mark Level
Like and Subscribe, aka Lie & Suborn: Your Both-Siderism deceives nobody, apart from maybe a few of the stupidest State Dept.-US AID saps like yourself, & maybe Tallifer, if she ever appears again here. There are fascists in every country, duh!!, fascism as an ideology, the worship of Power and Violence for its own sake is a psychological go-to for some of the weakest and most pathetic losers ever: See e.g. Stephen Miller, a scrawny, bald homunculus, the screeching Israel firster Mark Levine, Li’l Ben Shapiro, the Virgin Ben who won’t fight but will endlessly rage on Israel’s behalf. He stayed a virgin until marriage due to Bronze Age religious beliefs, but hypocritically sides with US Fetus Fans despite the fact that in fact the same Judaism has no problem with termination of a fetus in a reasonable period of time.
I repeat myself because you pretend never to have heard me: there are Monuments to Stephan Bandera, schools, streets named after him, Zelensky and those clowns wear Nazi Insignia (as has the likes of Sebastian Gorka).
The Russians are anti-Fascist, that is the ideology of the majority of the Russian people and the leadership after WW II and the murder of 23-27 million people by the 3rd Reich, including Vlad Putin’s older brother, who starved to death during a siege.
You can spew distractions like David Duke 24 hours a day (assuming you have the energy) & it fools next to nobody. Btw when I lived in New Orleans in the 1980s I attended an anti-Duke demonstration with friends, who were better prepared than I was and pelted him with eggs and tomatoes. Also, I demonstrated against the Republicans during Bush Senior’s 1988 ReThuglican convention in NOLA. There was a demonstration of what was supposed to be a “Skinhead Army” there, I showed up with some white ally anti-Fascist friends. The “Army” was about 11 people, 4 of them children, toothless retardate types just as one would have expected. A very large group, 40-50 of black people, men and women, showed up to confront them, scared the shit out of them but were restrained enough not to beat their asses.
I don’t think you have any experience like mine, but please share if I’m mistaken. I asked you to come out and defend your open Banderism in a prior thread, and you were a chickenshit and never replied. Man up, have the courage of your fascist convictions or distract and gaslight. Your frantic dancing is not compelling or believable.
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The Russians are anti-Fascist …
Stop with this nonsense. Firstly, despite Putin’s efforts to create a totalitarian state replete with homogenous units for people, the Russian people are in no way a monolith and the Russians of the WWII era versus the most recent generations scarcely resemble one another in character and/or behavior. Any string of continuity that exists between the generations is threadbare at best.
If Putin was truly anti-fascist, Donald Trump would be his PROCLAIMED mortal enemy. Instead, despite perhaps his true feelings and misgivings, he pretends to like and respect Trump, even going so far as to meet with the orange Mussolini in Alaska. At least Iran has the cajones to not pretend.
For Putin, fascism and anti-fascism are different ends of the same tool he has used, he has many tools for the job, to consolidate absolute power and maintain it.
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2022/opinion/russias-long-history-of-neo-nazis
Some have pointed out the far right received only 2% of the vote in Ukraine’s 2019 parliamentary elections, far less than in most of Europe. Others have drawn attention to Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the efforts of the Ukrainian state to protect minorities like Crimean Tatars and LGBTQ+ people, who are subject to brutal persecution in Russia.
What has received less coverage is the Putin regime’s own record of collaboration with far-right extremists. Even as Russian diplomats condemned “fascists” in the Baltic states and Kremlin propagandists railed against imaginary “Ukronazis” in power in Kyiv, the Russian state was cultivating its own homegrown Nazis.
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/putin-doesnt-combat-nazism-he-cultivates-it/
This link fairly underscores Ukraine’s Nazi problem and in no way marginalizes it and dismisses it, but it also, equitably I might add, underscores Russia’s Nazi problem.
Putin has seized upon far-right currents within Ukraine’s militias as evidence of reactionary Nazism while simultaneously cultivating far-right, ultranationalist sentiments. Russia’s most infamous military proxy, the Wagner Group, operates in support of Russian foreign policy objectives, and is trained on installations of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Moscow has utilised their expeditionary forces to wage deniable war and promote the Kremlin’s interests in places like Libya, Syria, Mozambique, and Mali.
The Wagner Group is named after 19th century German composer Richard Wagner, whose music Adolf Hitler adored. In a photo that first emerged on Russian VK accounts and a Telegram group associated with the mercenaries, the group’s leader, Dmitry Utkin, dons neo-Nazi tattoos, including a swastika, Waffen SS lightning bolts, and a Reichsadler Eagle. Wagner mercenaries have reportedly left behind neo-Nazi propaganda in the conflict zones they have meddled in. In Libya, pictures appeared of Wagner combatants, some garbed in German World War II uniforms, purportedly re-enacting scenes from Rommel’s operation against British troops in Libya in 1942.
The Wagner Group been heavily involved in Russia’s protracted war on Ukraine. Its units aided Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and rebelled alongside pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. They have also been operating in the present conflict, with dozens of Wagner mercenaries pulled from the Central African Republic to join Russian forces amassing in Ukraine.
There is also the neo-Nazi, white supremacist group the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which the U.S. State Department designated a terrorist organisation in 2020. With the Kremlin’s implicit authorisation, the RIM operates paramilitary camps near St. Petersburg, in which neo-Nazis and white supremacists from across Europe are instructed in terrorist tactics.
Putin also utilises neo-Nazi organisations beyond warfare operations. An essential element of the Kremlin’s crusade to manipulate cracks in the West is exploiting transnational white supremacist movements to endorse racially and ethnically inspired violent extremism. Russia serves as a sanctuary and networking hub for far-right extremists, with one of America’s most infamous neo-Nazis finding refuge there. Rinaldo Nazzaro, leader of The Base, an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist paramilitary organisation, lives in Russia and guides the group from St. Petersburg.
Among the virtual ecosystems populated by far-right, white supremacist extremists, Russia’s wanton invasion of Ukraine has been a considerable focus of conversation. Opinion is split — the far-right, white supremacist online environment has never been a monolith. While some ally with Putin, others support Ukraine, or simply hope for carnage and mayhem. Putin’s mission has found a receptive audience among far-right extremists in America, who often look to Putin’s Russia as the last bastion of white, Christian purity. Moscow and its proxies have provided finance and other assistance to these far-right populists across Europe and North America since long before Russia’s invasion. Even before the invasion, as tensions increased between Russia and Ukraine, some far-right groups were already disseminating pro-Russian, anti-Western, anti-Semitic propaganda.
Putin’s weaponisation of neo-Nazis was always a dicey tactic, but it was not illogical. Unlike mainstream nationalists, who often support the concept of free elections, neo-Nazis repudiate democratic institutions and the very idea of egalitarianism. For a dictator disassembling democracy and engineering an authoritarian regime, they were perfect accessories. In Ukraine, Putin is not combating neo-Nazism. The country most in need of “de-Nazification” is Putin’s Russia.
You know you are losing the argument when you have to resort to name calling and incessantly calling me a Banderite and a fascist when I am no such thing and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Keep it up. To an impartial, objective audience, it makes you look weak and insecure. I’m not sure if that audience exists here. My guess is, there are a few so this is for them, certainly not for you. Well, them, and also for too-often-neglected-and-forgotten posterity.
Carborundum
I agree, this one has been uniquely challenging in the extent and nature of the fake imagery produced. I haven’t monitored extensively for the last week or so because I’ve been buried in a project, but at least early in the conflict the vast majority of the stuff coming out purporting to be Iranian weapons effects was either fake or misattributed (there was certainly some true stuff in there, particularly when looking at hits in the Gulf, but the volume of deliberate deception was simply astounding). Not so sure that that is still quite as true – have seen a couple of things go by over the past couple of days that have actually looked to be genuine indicators of effects inside Israel.
Conversely, the bulk of the stuff coming out of US/Israel showing weapons effects inside Iran – or at least the stuff the algos feed to me – has looked genuine. The key challenge there is that we don’t have that much to pry with in terms of supporting data (e.g., little good imagery of impact areas, etc.). Of course, given the state of art, they may simply have much better feedstock for producing generative models (and understand basic concepts like light travels faster than sound, how IR sensors work, etc.).
All that said, the most successful thing I think Iranian IO has done is make it seem like they’re not getting as hit as hard as they are. They are not going to come out of this with anything like the conventional military capability they had going in. The brutal truth that western strategists need to accept, however, is how little that actually matters. The folks getting really shafted here are the theoretical US allies stuck living next door.
mago
Food fight
Toss some hot buns my way
Feral Finster
@L&S:
“The Russians are anti-Fascist …
Stop with this nonsense. Firstly, despite Putin’s efforts to create a totalitarian state replete with homogenous units for people, the Russian people are in no way a monolith and the Russians of the WWII era versus the most recent generations scarcely resemble one another in character and/or behavior. Any string of continuity that exists between the generations is threadbare at best.”
Russia has done no such thing, opposition media still publish, Russia has not taken the stepa to create a monolith, like you claim. Otherwise a series of unfalifiable assertions.
Compare to Ukraine.
If Putin was truly ant”i-fascist, Donald Trump would be his PROCLAIMED mortal enemy. Instead, despite perhaps his true feelings and misgivings, he pretends to like and respect Trump, even going so far as to meet with the orange Mussolini in Alaska. At least Iran has the cajones to not pretend.”
Russia deals with Trump= for the same reason Ukraine or anyone else does. They have to.
Similarly, the argument that neonazis received a small share of the vote in Ukraine in 2019 – that has nothing to do with the fact that in Ukraine, they have their own military units and make policy.
In Russia, BTW, a swastika tattoo will get you imprisoned. Not in Ukraine. For that matter, Russian Nazis also have flocked to Ukraine, but I am yet to hear of a Ukrainian Nazi going to Russia.
Otherwise, your concluding paragraph is a bunch of strawman arguments. That’s seriously all you got?
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Hot buns? We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969. I’ll toss some miso and brown rice instead. Hot buns are pure diabetes. All you have to do is look at one and your blood sugar surges.