Iran deploys Lego-style animation in propaganda war with US, Israel
While Iran hits back against U.S. and Israeli attacks with missiles and drones, it is also fighting a propaganda war with a Lego-style animation video complete with toy renditions of Donald Trump, bombs and warplanes.
Iran's state-run Revayat-e Fath institute released its video on state television following the February 28 U.S.-Israeli attacks that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered the Middle East war.
The two-minute video has since been shared on Meta-owned platforms and on X, garnering tens of thousands of likes and shares.
With no dialogue, it appears designed to have international reach in a war that has rattled energy and stock markets, and divided world public opinion.
The video kicks off with Lego-type depictions of U.S. President Trump flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the devil himself, looking at an album titled the "Epstein file" (sic).
Enraged, Trump hits a red button to kick off the war, and sends a missile through the clouds that hits what looks like a classroom, with toys representing girls wearing pink headscarves as they listen to their smiling teacher.
After the teacher writes on the board the words "My homeland is my life", the screen goes dark. The next scene shows a pink backpack and a pair of pink shoes in the rubble of a strike.
An Iranian officer, also in Lego-inspired form, picks up the bag and weeps, before his sadness turns to rage.
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of conducting a deadly strike on a school in Minab in the south on the first day of the war.
With a nationalist score playing, the video later shows Iranian Revolutionary Guards retaliating by attacking U.S. interests and Israel across the region.
The video ends with a message saying it was made in remembrance of students killed in the strike, "who were martyred at the hands of Zionist and American terrorists".
Mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, in the country's southern Hormozgan Province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, say the school was probably struck amid a quick succession of bombs dropped on the compound.
A U.S. official familiar with internal deliberations on the matter has told the AP that the strike was likely American. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.
A new footage, first analyzed by the investigative group Bellingcat, was taken the day the school was struck but circulated Sunday by Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency. It shows a missile hitting a building, sending a dark plume of smoke into the air.
The AP was able to geolocate the video and determine it was taken from a site adjacent to the school, while smoke was already rising from the school vicinity. Satellite imagery of the compound is consistent with visual identifiers found in the video, including a flat-roofed building, power lines and vehicles.
Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile — which only the U.S. is known to possess in this war. It's the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.
U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.
Bellingcat said the footage "appears to contradict" U.S. President Donald Trump's claim over the weekend that Iran was responsible for the deadly school blast.
When asked about the strike at a press conference Monday, Trump claimed that Iran has access to the Tomahawk cruise missile, which is made by American defense contractor Raytheon. While the company sells the missile to allied countries like Japan and Australia, there is no evidence to suggest that Iran has acquired it.
Trump argued that the cruise missile is "sold and used by other countries" and that Iran "also has some Tomahawks."
"Whether it's Iran or somebody else ... a Tomahawk is very generic," he said.
When asked why he was the only person in his administration making the claim, Trump said, "Because I just don't know enough about it." He added that "whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report."
On Saturday, Trump also was asked by a reporter whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast. Without providing evidence, he responded, "No, in my opinion, based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran." Trump added that Iran is "very inaccurate" with its munitions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.
- Several other factors point to a U.S. strike -
One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon's instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.
Another is the location of the school — next to the Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn't reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.
Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the school had been a part of the neighboring IRGC base — it would still be "a very serious violation of international law."
"Attackers are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify the status of targeted object," she wrote.
The Trump administration, however, strikes a different tone on international humanitarian law.
Speaking about the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said: "America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history."
"No stupid rules of engagement," he said. "No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives."
Source: Agence France Presse, Associated Press
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