Team Behind Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed A.I. generated Campaign videos (New Yorker)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-team-behind-a-pro-iran-lego-themed-viral-video-campaign

The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign
Explosive News’ A.I.-generated videos have been shared by Iranian-government accounts and co-opted by No Kings protesters. A spokesperson for the group says, “Let’s face it—if truth isn’t flashy, it’s kinda lonely.”
By Kyle Chayka
April 2, 2026

Last year, a YouTube channel called Akhbar Enfejari (Explosive News) began posting a variety of digital content with a political and moralistic bent. A young Iranian man delivered Middle Eastern news commentary for the camera, influencer-style, ring-lit in front of a neon backdrop. Artificial intelligence-generated animations stressed the importance of decisiveness and offered tips on navigating Iran’s water crisis. The channel and a related Instagram account had a pronounced anti-Western slant—“Send this video to filthy America so it explodes 💣,” one caption read—but its clips were not particularly galvanizing. Most netted only a few hundred views each. Then, in February of this year, Explosive News hit its stride with a new style of content: A.I.-generated animated propaganda against the U.S.’s war on Iran, done in the style of Lego movies, with world leaders caricatured as yellow bobbleheads and missiles as plastic bricks.

In recent weeks, the Explosive News Lego videos have become inescapable artifacts of an international conflict that was already generating barrages of digital content. The clips have accumulated millions of views and many enthusiastic comments from Western audiences. They have been re-shared by Iranian-government accounts, promoted by Russian state media, and co-opted by No Kings protesters for their flamboyant anti-Trump imagery. The political messaging on display in the videos is as blunt and cartoonish as the blocky Lego characters. Lego Iranians celebrate missiles flying toward Tel Aviv as an A.I.-generated rap soundtrack plays. (The song is “L.O.S.E.R”; “Taste the ash of defeat,” it goes.) A Lego grave reads “R.I.P. Donald John Trump.” A missile-struck White House lights up in flames. The videos express a crude solidarity with victims of U.S. aggression, past and present; in one clip, Lego missiles bear messages in English commemorating everyone from Native Americans to Vietnamese villagers and “stolen blacks.” “ONE VENGEANCE FOR ALL,” text declares in all caps. The videos are also fluent in the language of conspiracy and online trolling. One makes reference to rumors that Benjamin Netanyahu was killed in Iranian strikes and replaced by a deepfake. Another, playing into frenzied online speculation about Trump’s health, depicts a bruise blooming on one of the Lego President’s hands. One clip shows Lego Trump perusing pictures of himself and Netanyahu in the Jeffrey Epstein files, then creating a distraction by launching the missile that struck an Iranian girl’s school last month. The flurry of imagery provokes a surreal sort of whiplash. The subject matter is deathly serious—international war, unfolding in real time, killing thousands—yet the visual vocabulary is preposterously trivializing.

Some news reports have described Explosive News as having ties to the Iranian regime. Forbes, for instance, cited the fact that the Lego videos have been reposted on Telegram by Tasnim News, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Jerusalem Post noted that certain clips were labelled with an “apparent watermark” for Revayat-e Fath, which is the name of an Iranian state-run media foundation. During an e-mail correspondence this week, a representative of Explosive News claimed that it is “totally independent”—“no government. No military. No state TV.” “Revayat-e Fath,” he said, “is the Persian title of the two videos we released—Victory Chronicles 1 and 2. (In persian: روایت فتح .” When pressed by a fact checker about ties to the regime, he said, coyly, “Is there any way to prove that you are not connected to Jennifer Lawrence?!” He described Explosive News as a “student-led media team with a background in social activism,” and said that the individuals behind it wished to remain anonymous out of fear that their viral success might make them targets in the war campaign. He added, “Funny twist: some of our old universities . . . got bombed. Yep. Quite a ‘gift’ from Donald Trump to Iranian science and culture!”

Explosive News posted its first Lego-style videos during the U.S. and Israel’s bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear facilities last June. When the war began, in February, the representative said, “Our team was ready, plans in place, engines revving—and, by day two, the Lego-style videos were back in action.” They started churning out new clips, writing scripts and then generating corresponding visuals using A.I. and digital editing tools. “Working full time, we can produce a two-minute video in about 24 hours,” the representative said.

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