Minutes after President Donald Trump introduced that he would not wipe out “a complete civilization” on Tuesday night, a staff of self-described younger Iranian activists jumped into motion.
Members of the group referred to as Explosive Media have been placing the ending touches on their newest AI-generated, Lego-inspired Trump video. The video incorporates a Trump mini-figure colluding with leaders from Gulf states, Iranian officers urgent a giant purple button labeled “again to the stone age,” and Trump throwing a chair at US generals.
This was the newest of greater than a dozen movies the pro-Iran group has launched since the starting of the struggle in February, a lot of which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on mainstream platforms. Whereas Iranian authorities accounts have posted Lego-style movies in the previous, Explosive Media’s content material is extra refined and scripted. And it is produced by a staff of younger pro-Iranian creators who seem deeply educated about the web and American tradition. Already some critics have alleged the group has ties to the Iranian authorities.
“We have been virtually sure Trump would again down; it was clear to us,” a member of the Explosive Media staff, who did not need to publicly determine themselves, tells WIRED. “We have been ready for this state of affairs and had content material prepared prematurely. We simply made a couple of changes and launched it.”
The staff even added point out of the 10-point plan Iran proposed as a part of its current ceasefire settlement. As the video concludes, a Lego Trump sits subsequent to the doc, sobbing whereas holding a white flag and consuming a taco—a realizing reference to the acronym for “Trump always chickens out.”
Inside hours of Trump’s announcement, the video was revealed on Explosive Media’s X account and Telegram channel, the place it had the caption: “IRAN WON! The way in which to crush imperialism has been proven to the world. Trump Surrendered. TACO will all the time stay TACO.”
Whereas the Trump administration has been posting memes that intercut war footage with movie clips that enchantment to a slim viewers of loyal followers, Explosive Media’s Lego movies have reached a much wider viewers in the US—a few of whom clearly preferred what they noticed.
“We’ve dedicated ourselves to studying extra on daily basis about American individuals and tradition,” the Explosive Media staff member tells WIRED. “On this course of, Individuals themselves have been serving to us—and that assist and steering continues. They share impactful suggestions and concepts with us.”
Explosive Media began in 2025 as a YouTube channel that includes political commentary delivered by a younger Iranian man. The content material by no means gained traction, with most movies racking up solely a pair hundred views.
However all that modified in February, when the group started posting Lego-inspired movies, with the staff scripting, producing, and enhancing every video utilizing AI instruments. (The group would not reveal which AI instruments it was utilizing.)
The movies shortly took maintain on platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram.
“Individuals are disengaging from a few of the actual battle content material and on the lookout for one thing that may distill what’s taking place shortly and in a language and tone that they perceive and that is what these Lego movies are doing,” Moustafa Ayad, a researcher with the Institute of Strategic Dialogue who has intently tracked the on-line content material being shared by Iranian teams throughout the struggle, tells WIRED. “They’re making it simply accessible to perceive the battle from Iran’s standpoint, and it is hitting on factors of disaffection in the United States at the similar time. It is working on two fronts.”
Iran has beforehand used Lego-style movies in struggle propaganda. Again in 2024, in accordance to Ayad, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shared hyperlinks to a Lego video, and through the Twelve-Day Conflict in 2025, Iranian state media proclaimed victory over Israel in another Lego video.
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