In its latest war against Iran, Israel showed itself capable of fending off the vast majority of the hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones launched at it by the Islamic Republic.

But shielding itself from Tehran’s digital arsenal has proved significantly harder.

While the US and Israel have reportedly employed artificial intelligence in unprecedented ways to guide aerial strikes and help identify targets during the conflict, Iran has found ample use for generative AI on another front: the battle for hearts and minds.

Employing Western trends and cultural references, AI-generated photos and videos demeaning Israeli and US leaders, glorifying Iranian military capabilities and asserting the Islamic Republic’s resilience have garnered over a billion views online, seeding narratives pushed by Tehran among impressionable Americans and others.

Compounded by a parallel wave of AI deepfakes showing misleading content about the war, the meme-heavy content — much of which makes use of anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitic tropes — constitutes a growing challenge for Israel as it seeks international legitimacy and support for its military actions against Iran.

“Audiences unfamiliar with the conflict, younger audiences especially, are much more vulnerable and exposed to this kind of content,” said Daniel Haberfeld, co-head of the cyber terrorism desk at Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, warning that the trend marks “a major threat” to getting  Israel’s message across.

Iran’s mastery of what some outlets have dubbed “slopaganda” has the potential to redefine the information war in a world where truth is increasingly difficult to discern, experts say. In an interview that aired Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conceded that the arena was one in which Israel was falling behind.

“Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we’ve not done well on the propaganda war,” he told CBS.

His comments came a week after US President Donald Trump admitted that while Iran has been militarily crushed, “they’re pretty good at propaganda.”

Asked about how Israel was responding to Iran’s viral AI content amid the war, the Foreign Ministry said it was working “on an unprecedented scale in the battle for public perception,” but declined to address Iran’s online activity.

Some of the most viral content coming out of Iran has been a series of Lego-themed animations created by AI, which star Trump and focus on Israel’s purported control over America and the consequences of attacking Iran.

The videos — many of which were shared online by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iranian embassies around the globe — generally take the form of short rap-style songs, with lyrics and imagery recalling real wartime news stories as well as conspiracy theories and antisemitic tropes.

One of the most viral, shared by Iranian state media without clear attribution to who created it, features clips of Trump trading the “America First” slogan to ultra-Orthodox rabbis in exchange for money and bowing alongside Netanyahu to the biblical Canaanite idol Baal. Both the song lyrics and imagery are replete with references to allegations of sexual abuse of children tied to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Over the clips, an AI voice sings “Make Israel Great Again. Your government is run by pedophiles. They ordered you to die for Israel. They lied to you all,” sound the rap lyrics.

The references draw on some of the oldest antisemitic tropes, such as Jews being puppet masters who buy political loyalty from gentile rulers, and the medieval-era blood libel accusing Jews of murdering gentile children to harvest their blood for ritual sacrifice.

“The Lego videos are clearly aimed at an American audience that is anti-Trump and anti-war, as they heavily incorporate themes tied to US domestic politics,” said Holly Dagres, senior fellow at The Washington Institute.

She noted that Iranian embassy accounts in some countries that share the video “tend to emphasize themes of colonialism and anti-imperialism, messaging that resonates more strongly........

© The Times of Israel