a few minutes later President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he has no intention of wiping out “an entire civilization,” and a team of self-proclaimed young Iranian activists took action.
Members of the group known as Explosive Media were putting the finishing touches on their latest AI-generated Lego-inspired Trump video. The video shows a minifigure of Trump colluding with Gulf leaders, an Iranian official pushing a big red button that says “Back to the Stone Age,” and Trump throwing a chair at a U.S. general.
It is the latest of more than a dozen videos released by pro-Iranian groups since the war began in February, many of which have racked up millions of views on mainstream platforms. Iranian government accounts have posted Lego-style videos in the past, but Explosive Media’s content is more sophisticated and scripted. And it’s produced by a team of young, pro-Iranian creators who appear to have deep knowledge of the internet and American culture. Some critics have already claimed that the group has ties to the Iranian government.
“We were almost certain that Mr. Trump was going to leave. It was clear to us,” a member of the Explosive Media team, who did not want to be identified, told WIRED. “We prepared for this scenario and prepared the content in advance. We just made a few adjustments and released it.”
The team also mentioned a 10-point plan proposed by Iran as part of the recent ceasefire agreement. The video ends with a Lego Trump sitting next to a document, holding a white flag and sobbing while eating a taco, an intentional reference to the acronym “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Within hours of President Trump’s announcement, the video was published on Explosive Media’s X account and Telegram channel with the caption, “Iran has won! The world has been shown how to crush imperialism. Trump has surrendered. TACO will always be TACO.”
While the Trump administration has posted memes interspersed with war footage and movie clips to appeal to a narrow audience of loyal supporters, Explosive Media’s Lego video reached a broader audience in the United States, some of whom clearly liked what they saw.
“We have been dedicated to learning more about American people and culture every day,” a member of the Explosive Media team told WIRED. “Americans themselves have helped us in this process, and that support and guidance continues. They share tips and ideas with us that make an impact.”
Explosive Media began in 2025 as a YouTube channel featuring political commentary by young Iranians. The content never gained traction and most videos only racked up a few hundred views.
But everything changed in February when the team started posting LEGO-inspired videos using AI tools to script, produce, and edit each video. (The group did not say which AI tools it was using.)
The video quickly became a fixture on platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram.
“People are looking for something that can take them away from some of the actual conflict content and quickly distill what’s going on in a language and tone that they understand, and that’s what Lego Video does,” Mustafa Ayad, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has closely tracked online content shared by Iranian groups during the war, told WIRED. “They’re making it easier to understand the conflict from Iran’s perspective, and at the same time they’re hitting points of frustration in the United States. They’re working on two fronts.”
Iran has previously used Lego-like videos for war propaganda. According to Ayad, in 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shared a link to a Lego video, and in 2025, during the Twelve Days War, Iranian state media declared victory over Israel in another Lego video.
