At the Fifth International Colloquium “Patria” in Havana, held April 16–18, Chilean academic Pedro Santander argued that communication is no longer secondary in modern war. It is part of the battlefield itself.
Santander was describing how Iran uses short videos, simple animation, rapid production and repetition to make a complex war legible on social media. That framework also helps explain the U.S. side. The difference is fabrication.
What has come into view in April is an organized lying apparatus: fake U.S.-funded newsrooms, AI-generated anchors, fabricated expert quotes, atrocity claims pushed from the presidential megaphone, and a corporate press that passes them along. The war on Iran is being sold through fabricated stories, official threats and repeated false claims.
Pentagon propaganda with an 18-year paper trail
On April 20, The Intercept reported that a network of websites posing as independent West Asian news outlets is funded by the U.S. government. Reporter Sam Biddle traced the operation back to a 2008 U.S. Special Operations Command program called the Trans-Regional Web Initiative.
SOCOM hired General Dynamics Information Technology to run 10 websites distributing what the contract itself called “web-based influence products.” Local stringers produced material that U.S. combatant commands could use in support of the so-called war on terror. Congress cut the program in 2014 after judging it a failure.
The network did not disappear. It changed names and moved under new cover. In 2022, researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika uncovered fake “pro-Western” social media accounts pushing articles from pseudo-news sites — a network Meta and Twitter attributed to the U.S. military. The researchers concluded the accounts were amplifying content from sham outlets established by SOCOM.
After that report, some sites shut down. Others stayed up and changed their disclosure language. Instead of openly referencing CENTCOM sponsorship, they shifted to a vaguer formula: They were “a product of an international media organization publicly funded from the budget of the United States Government.” That language now appears, buried behind an “About” link, on two sites called Al-Fassel and Pishtaz News.
The new front: Al-Fassel and Pishtaz News
Al-Fassel publishes in Arabic and English. Pishtaz News publishes in Farsi and English. Both present themselves as independent journalism operations covering stories “often overlooked by local and regional media.”
What they publish is war messaging dressed up as journalism. Al-Fassel’s YouTube channel has drawn millions of views on Arabic-language videos praising Trump administration policy on Gaza and urging Hamas to stop “taking orders from the Iranian regime.” Pishtaz News runs homepage polls asking whether Iran’s Supreme Leader is “in good health but hiding,” “disfigured” or “dead.” Both sites relentlessly promote the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two close U.S. military partners.
The links to the U.S. military are specific. Al-Fassel’s posts on X are frequently geotagged from Lutz, Florida, near the headquarters of both CENTCOM and SOCOM in Tampa. On X, Pishtaz News follows only three accounts; two are official CENTCOM accounts for Farsi and Arabic audiences. On Instagram, where neither site discloses its government funding, Pishtaz follows a single account: “US CENTCOM FARSI.”
The sites also share design features with known TRWI-era publications: the same URL structures, the same 404 graphics, the same end-of-post reader polls with identical icons. Their English-language URLs are marked “en_GB,” for Britain. A 2015 University of Bath doctoral study documented this as a deliberate SOCOM practice to avoid any suggestion that U.S. military propaganda sites were targeting domestic audiences.
Renée DiResta, a former Stanford researcher and co-author of the 2022 report, told The Intercept the sites fit the same pattern as earlier Pentagon operations: government affiliation disclosed only in hard-to-find “About” pages, with no acknowledgment on social media.
AI anchors, fabricated quotes and claims contradicted by events
The fabrication extends to the people delivering the news. A January 2026 Al-Fassel YouTube segment featuring a newscaster was identified by Georgetown University deepfake researcher Sejin Paik and Witness researcher Zuzanna Wojciak as likely AI-generated. One of the strongest indicators, Paik said, was the near-total absence of eye blinks.
Sourcing was fabricated too. A July 2025 Al-Fassel article quoted energy analyst Umud Shokri, who is affiliated with George Mason University and the State Department. Shokri told The Intercept he had never been contacted by the site and did not know it was tied to the U.S. government. The quotes appear to have been lifted from his earlier public comments without his knowledge.
The outlets’ battlefield claims have also been overtaken by events. On March 27, Al-Fassel described the Houthis as “crippled” and “largely disintegrated,” capable only of offering “verbal support” for Iran. On March 28, Houthi forces launched cruise missiles at Israeli military sites. On March 5, Pishtaz News claimed Iran’s ability to strike U.S. forces was “rapidly eroding.” By early April, Iran was still launching missiles at U.S. bases and had downed a U.S. F-15 and an A-10 Warthog.
At times, the mask slips completely. A March 27 Pishtaz post addressed Iranian forces directly in Farsi: “You will be systematically annihilated. Your commanders are hiding in bunkers. They have sent their families and wealth abroad — why are you still fighting for them?” That is psychological warfare in the form of a news post.
The presidential megaphone
On April 21, Trump posted on Truth Social about eight women he claimed were about to be executed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The post had no sourcing and no verifiable basis.
That is how the machinery works. Pentagon-backed fake newsrooms generate regime-change content under the cover of journalism. Social media platforms circulate it. The president amplifies atrocity claims without sourcing and without proof from the most powerful political megaphone in the world.
Trump’s April 21 CNBC interview with Joe Kernen showed the same pattern again. Trump claimed that 42,000 unarmed Iranian protesters had been killed in recent months and that Iranian missile stocks had been destroyed. Kernen challenged none of it. He opened the segment by saying Iran had confirmed it would send representatives to talks in Islamabad, a claim contradicted within hours by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, which reported that Iran had notified Pakistan it would not send a delegation. The following day, NBC reported that a Pentagon intelligence assessment contradicted Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s public claims that Iran’s air force had been “wiped out” and its navy was “at the bottom of the sea.”
Corporate media does not need to invent the lies itself. It only needs to pass them along and refuse to ask questions.
Speedboats and aircraft carriers
Santander’s contrast helps identify the asymmetry. Iran’s communications strategy tries to make a complex war understandable: short videos, direct messages, rapid production, material designed to reach audiences before larger operations can bury it. Even an Atlantic Council fellow and former Pentagon cyber policy adviser told The Intercept that the U.S. “could learn some lessons from Iran” in online communications.
The U.S. strategy depends on fabrication because the real case for this war cannot survive honest presentation. The gap between Washington’s claims and the actual course of the war is too wide to bridge directly. Instead, it is filled with an apparatus: government-funded fake newsrooms with an 18-year pedigree, AI-generated anchors, fabricated sourcing, a corporate press that treats presidential claims as self-verifying, and social media platforms that decline to enforce even their own transparency rules.
Iran needs speed because it has fewer resources. The United States needs deception because it has fewer facts.
Join the Struggle-La Lucha Telegram channel