The Sun Always Shines on Iranian TV

I came across this video on X today and the caption made me laugh. Apparently this actually aired on Iranian TV at some point.

Iranian media decided to showcase their successes against the US—and included scenes of a Soyuz missile hitting the battleship Yamato.

The problem is, Soyuz is a space carrier, and the Yamato sank in April 1945. 😉 pic.twitter.com/uhBg0UnopF

— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) March 4, 2026

And that’s just one example of a trend. Iranian TV is apparently presenting the fight with America very differently from what the rest of the world is seeing.

On Iran’s official television networks and through a network of affiliated or sympathetic social media accounts, the country is striving to present a resolute image despite thousands of strikes from Israel and the United States that have hammered its cities, military bases and political leadership.

It is waging an information war parallel to the real-world fighting, blending fact and fiction, often using unproven claims and fake videos generated using artificial intelligence.

In Tehran’s telling, Iranian missiles have ravaged Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, its jets have decimated an American aircraft carrier, and hundreds of Americans have been killed at bases and embassies around the region. The messages convey resilience, presenting the country as not only fighting back but winning.

There’s no telling how this is going over in Iran at the moment. The internet has been shut down once again, as it was during the government crackdown last month. So for many people there’s no way to compare what they are seeing on TV with reality.

Much of Iran’s official communication strategy — issued in Persian, Arabic and English — sought to inflate the success of Tehran’s counteroffensive in effusive terms, with one senior official saying in a statement aired on state television that its “extensive and successful operation” against Israel and other countries had “left all military experts in awe.”…

A social media account linked to the Iranian military claimed that 560 Americans had been killed or wounded so far in the fighting, far higher than the six deaths reported by the Pentagon. From there, Tass, a Russian state news agency, circulated the claim, followed by RT, another Kremlin-backed outlet. The claim was eventually picked up by a variety of social media accounts and channels.

PressTV, one of Iran’s state broadcasters that airs in English and French, posted a video on X that seemed generated by A.I., describing a high-rise building in Bahrain aflame after Iranian airstrikes. (The post was later removed.) Another image that purported to show the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia on fire spread widely on social media, including X and Telegram. Neither video was consistent with credible accounts and footage from the ground.

People supporting Iran are even circulating AI videos of US soldiers in tears. And sometimes they just invent attacks that never happened.

On the second day of the war, an anchor on Iranian state television read a statement from the military claiming that the Abraham Lincoln, one of the American aircraft carriers involved in the initial strikes, was “attacked by four ballistic missiles.” It was not.

It never happened but there’s video:

Jamais depuis la guerre avec le l’Empire du Soleil levant, l’US Navy n’avait enregistrée des pertes aussi élevée.
Les États-Unis et Israël se rapprochent du désastre à grands pas. pic.twitter.com/jkhO19qezW

— Rémi Philiponet 🇨🇵 (@remi_philiponet) March 4, 2026

Look at all that fake damage:

“یہ ابراہام کو کیا ہوا؟” pic.twitter.com/sgOfmcUei6

— ابو سعاد (@AbdullahAu20584) March 4, 2026

You get the idea. There’s a lot of AI generated junk being pushed out by Iran and it’s all their citizens are seeing.

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