An embattled Iran is targeting one of Donald Trump’s key weaknesses in a bid to undermine the US war effort: the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Messaging from the regime and supporters – widely circulated among a global audience on social media – has heavily focused on the deceased sex offender and his connections to the US elite, including Trump, taking advantage of a subject that continues to plague the President and stir public outrage.
Top Iranian officials have referred to the Trump administration as the “Epstein gang” and “Epstein’s followers” since the start of the US-Israeli attack on 28 February – messages strategically aimed at an American audience.
State media broadcast an animated film featuring a Lego Satan and Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, using the Epstein files to cajole Trump into launching strikes. Regime-aligned outlets are pumping out AI memes promoting the same narrative.
Tehran-linked social media accounts have promoted images of a missile being prepared for launch with the digitally altered message: “In memory of the victims of Epstein Island,” written on its side – referring to the notorious Caribbean island to which the financier invited his associates and victims of his crimes.
Thousands of social media users, including Americans, have shared a viral post expressing sentiments to the effect of: “Iran’s President [Masoud Pezeshkian] is a heart surgeon. Your president is a paedophile.”
Trump, who associated with the financier in the 1990s, has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and has said he did not know about his crimes.
A White House spokesperson told The i Paper: “The Trump Administration will continue fighting the fake news and share the truth directly with the American people: the terrorist Iranian regime continues to be completely crushed under the full might of the US military.”
A social media meme produced by Iranian state media depicting Trump attacking Iran to hide the Epstein files, with an image of a girl killed in a US air strike (Photo: Tasnim)Operation Epstein Fury
Iran and its supporters have been able to tap into US criticism of the Trump administration over the Epstein scandal, with many believing that the war with Iran was launched as a distraction.
Trump has consistently attempted to prevent the publication of files related to investigations into Epstein. While Congress passed a bill to force their release last year, his Government has kept back many documents related to the case. Politicians and activists continue to press for full transparency.
The sudden attack on Iran at a time the White House was under pressure over the scandal has fueled theories that the two are linked. A poll last week found that 52 per cent of respondents agreed that Trump was “at least partly motivated to take military action against Iran in order to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal”.
The hashtag “Operation Epstein Fury”, a play on the official name “Operation Epic Fury”, was shared nearly 100,000 times in the first three days of the US-Israel strikes on Iran, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
High-profile politicians have echoed the claim. Republican congressman Thomas Massie warned, “bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away” while Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested the timing of the war was not a “coincidence”.
Iranian propaganda is targeting the US
Iran’s messaging is seeking to strengthen anti-war sentiment as a strategic goal, analysts believe, and may find traction with Trump’s increasingly divided base.
Former Maga loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene told CNN this week that “the large majority of Americans, especially younger Americans … are 1,000 per cent against this “.
Ruslan Trad, an information warfare specialist at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and Bulgarian outlet Kapital, said Iranian propaganda was almost exclusively targeting US audiences within what he described as “the first major war where both the attacker and the defender are running meme-format state media campaigns simultaneously.”
Trad said Tehran was “targeting the segment of the American public susceptible to anti-war messaging, distrust of elites, or scepticism of the Epstein cover-up, which spans from Maga libertarians to progressive anti-imperialists”.
With public opinion leaning against the war, and Trump sending mixed messages about its duration, Iran may see testing US commitment as a means of ensuring the regime’s survival. “Iran views social media attrition of American public support, not battlefield outcomes, as the route to a ceasefire,” said Trad.
An Iranian missile with a digitally altered message expressed solidarity with Epstein’s victimsThomas Colley, a propaganda expert at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, suggested that while enemy propaganda was rarely effective with foreign publics, domestic divisions and anti-war sentiment gave Iran “ammunition”.
He added: “But the greater effect will come when key opinion leaders and influencers in the US are saying ‘I don’t recognise Trump any more’ and ‘Maga is dead’.”
Boasts and threats at home
Iran’s messaging on the home front has been markedly different, with the regime shutting down internet access and tightening its already firm grip on traditional media outlets.
Government reports on the war have claimed spectacular successes, such as striking a US aircraft carrier and killing and capturing hundreds of enemy soldiers, without verified evidence, often accompanied by AI-generated videos.
State media has broadcast footage purporting to show massive strikes on enemy targets, which experts say is often fabricated.
An AI-generated image of an Iranian attack on a US aircraft carrier (Photo: Iranian state media)Isis Blachez, an analyst at digital information group NewsGuard, said regime-aligned outlets have used Isis Blachez, an analyst at the digital information group NewsGuard, said regime-aligned outlets have used “AI-manipulated content” to portray successful attacks.
Regime supporters, sometimes outside the country, are also flooding social media platforms with supposed footage of Iranian military operations that are “misrepresented, manipulated, or entirely fake”, she said, citing the use of AI as well as clips from other conflicts and countries.
State media has also used AI to project control and normality, such as in films and posters depicting the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, without any sign of the injuries he reportedly suffered in a recent attack.
The regime has sent warnings via state media, which were reportedly also sent as texts, to internal opponents that dissent will not be tolerated, as the US and Israel encourage dissidents to rise up and overthrow the regime.
“Internal traitors to the homeland” would face a “stronger blow” than in the January uprising that saw thousands of regime opponents killed if they protest in public, one message said.
An AI-generated image showing Khamenei receiving the Iranian flag with his father and grandfather and the image on a billboard in central Tehran (Photo: Iranian state media)White House ‘competing for the same turf’
The Trump administration has pursued its own contentious PR strategy during the war, drawing criticism for some of its social media output and statements from top officials.
Videos posted from the White House account X have used footage purportedly of strikes on Iranian targets intercut with footage of video games and Hollywood movies. One clip modelled on the hit game Grand Theft Auto followed each bomb blast with the word “Wasted”.
The brash style has been mirrored in public statements, such as War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comment that Iran was facing “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
This approach to wartime communication has received pushback from military veterans who described it as “disrespectful”, as well as members of Congress and actor Ben Stiller, who featured in one of the clips.
Touchdown pic.twitter.com/aDNdqBdRzG
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026Colley said the Trump administration’s style was consistent with its messaging on other areas, such as domestic spats with Democrats, but appeared “more shocking” when applied to matters of life and death.
Trad suggests the White House social media material is aimed at young American men “who might otherwise scroll past a news item about a Middle East war. The aesthetic is deliberately borrowed from the entertainment sports gaming nexus: maximum dopamine, minimum moral weight.”
The US propaganda has something in common with Iran’s, he suggests.
“The US is trying to make an American domestic audience feel good about a war it is winning militarily. Iran is trying to make that same American audience feel bad enough about it to want it to stop,” said Trad.
“Both campaigns are essentially competing for the same psychological territory – American public tolerance for the conflict – but from opposite directions. “
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