At first glance, they look like scenes straight out of a Lego movie, although more vivid and exciting.
But these viral videos generated by man-made intelligence, inspired by the unmistakable Lego aesthetic, show dying children, fighter jets and US President Donald Trump, and are, in fact, propaganda for Iran.
The BBC Top Comment podcast spoke to a representative from Explosive Media, one of the key accounts generating these videos. He wanted us to refer to him as Mr. Explosive.
He is a social media expert who, at first, denies working for the Iranian government. In previous interviews, the company has stated that it is “totally independent.” But upon further questioning, Mr. Explosive admits that the regime is a “client,” something he has never publicly confirmed before.
The critical message of these videos is that Iran is resisting what it considers an all-powerful global oppressor: the United States.
The clips are striking and not at all subtle, but that has not diminished the enthusiasm with which people share and comment on them.
In one of the videos, Donald Trump falls into the middle of a whirlwind of documents from the “Epstein file” while a rap lyric tells us “secrets leak, the pressure increases.”
“Slopaganda”—a term coined in an academic paper last year as a play on “AI slop”—is too weak a term to capture how powerful this “highly sophisticated” content is, says Emma Briant, a leading propaganda expert.
It is estimated that AI-generated propaganda videos have been viewed hundreds of millions of times throughout the war.
In our video call with Mr. Explosive, he appears in shadows and flanked by red and green lights, the colors of the Iranian flag. On his desk is a helmet with green feathers associated with the warrior Husayn ibn Ali, who appears in several of his films.
He says his team at Explosive Media is less than ten people who use Lego-style graphics “because it’s a universal language.” Iranian and Russian state media accounts on X regularly share them with millions of followers.
We asked Mr. Explosive why Epstein’s files feature so much in his videos.
He says it is to show the audience the “kind of confrontation they are seeing” between Iran — which “seeks truth and freedom” — and “those who associate with cannibals.”
This is a reference to the theory that Epstein’s files link the Trump administration to cannibalism, a claim for which there is no credible evidence.
Inaccuracies
The videos are also riddled with factual inaccuracies, which we asked Mr. Explosive about.
In one clip, the Iranian military is shown capturing the pilot of a downed American fighter. US officials have confirmed that the pilot, who was stranded in a remote mountainous region of Iran after his plane was shot down, was rescued by US special forces on April 4.
Mr. Explosive does not accept this and states: “It is possible that there was no missing pilot, that there was no rescue operation. Their critical objective was to steal uranium from Iran.”
When we rebut him—citing U.S. officials who say the pilot is receiving treatment in Kuwait—he says, “Only 13% of what Mr. Trump says is based on facts.”
Explosive Media’s pilot video has managed to amplify this alternative narrative among the English-speaking public.
One partisan, US-based TikTok influencer — @newswithsteph — assured her viewers that the Lego videos had been “surprisingly accurate so far; they gave the scoop on the American pilot’s recent mission, which was not a rescue mission at all, but a special operations mission to obtain uranium.”
AI has allowed Iran and other countries to communicate directly with Western audiences more effectively than ever before, Briant says.
They are using tools trained largely on Western data, making them ideal for creating “culturally appropriate” content.
This is what “authoritarian countries that wanted to turn to the West have lacked in the past.”
Tine Munk, a cyberwarfare expert at Nottingham Trent University, characterizes Iran’s tactics as “defensive meme warfare,” which the creators believe is necessary to combat American rhetoric.
“An honor to work for the country”
Explosive Media videos first appeared in early 2025, but their popularity has grown tremendously in the wake of the US-Iran war.
These Lego-style videos are increasingly detailed and show specific places in the Gulf – such as power plants, airports and industrial estates – that are completely destroyed by Iranian missiles.
In reality, most have only suffered limited damage.
Movies are usually produced in “real time” and appear quickly after important events of the war. A video about the ceasefire agreement was released before official announcements were made.
Thousands of people have lost their lives in Iran, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries, according to official sources in these nations. The current conflict began in February, after the United States and Israel launched attacks against Iran.
After an exchange in our conversation, Mr. Explosive admits that the Iranian government is, indeed, a “client” of his company. In previous Instagram messages, he had told us that his company had received direct orders from Iranian officials for multiple projects.
Before the outbreak of war this year, thousands of protesters were killed in a brutal crackdown by the regime. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) reports a death toll of at least 7,000 civilians.
But Mr. Explosive defends his team’s relationship with the government, saying it was “an honor to work for the country.” He dismisses the recent mass protests as a “coup” financed by President Trump.
Mr. Explosive also rejects the accusations we have raised against him that his films use anti-Semitic tropes. “Our movies are not anti-Semitic; our movies are anti-Zionist,” he says. Defending the depiction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drinking blood, he says those images highlight the “atrocities committed by him.”
Most Iranians cannot use the web due to a widespread blackout across the country. Mr Explosive claims he was able to contact the BBC using the “journalist website” provided by the Iranian government.
Iran is consistently among the most repressive countries in the world when it comes to press freedom.
Social media platforms have been shutting down accounts with Lego-style videos, but new ones seem to emerge just as quickly.
It is a form of agile and aggressive web diplomacy that, according to Munk, seems to be here to stay.
The traditional thing, he adds, is that “it eliminates the intermediaries, the press and the media, and constantly makes spherical memes.”
“Traditional diplomacy does not exist here. And that blurs our understanding of what is happening. But it also increases the risk of misinterpretations and the situation escalating.”
“So we find ourselves in a kind of limbo.”
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