Anti-Semitism as Information Warfare

This spring, a video cartoon went viral on social media. While suspenseful music plays, the viewer looks over the shoulders of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, who together are looking through the Jeffrey Epstein files. Both leaders are depicted as if made from Legos, as are the other characters. The video then pans out to show the devil, who is drinking out of a gold chalice next to them. To distract from the files, Trump sends a missile emblazoned with the American flag at Iran. The music grows more intense as the video switches between the missile flying through the sky and young Iranian girls studying in a classroom. The missile strikes the school and kills the students, in a reference to the destruction of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School by what appears to have been an American airstrike. Then, an Iranian soldier, standing in the rubble, sheds two tears and starts fighting back. The video portrays Iran’s enemies as corrupt cowards, and the Iranians as a mighty military force on its way to certain victory.

This video isn’t some bizarre Internet anomaly. It was produced by Explosive Media, a group with links to Iranian state media, as part of one of the largest enemy state-backed information operation this year. Since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury at the end of February 2026, hundreds of millions of people have watched propaganda videos produced by the Iranian government and its agents. Thanks to artificial intelligence, it takes a mere 24 hours to produce one of them. These videos portray Iran as noble and the U.S. as wicked and, perhaps more importantly, suggest to an American audience that President Trump is waging war not because it is in the national interest but to satisfy a sinister foreign leader and to direct attention away from a domestic scandal involving a predatory Jewish financier.