Middle East conflict: White House posts montage of movie clips and real strikes on Iran

The White House has turned Iran strikes into a viral spectacle, mixing Hollywood heroics with real missile footage. Photo / Getty Images

The White House’s social media blurred the lines of reality on Saturday, posting montages that wove snippets of Hollywood blockbusters and video games into real footage of military strikes on Iran.

A 42-second video posted on X with the caption “Justice the American way” opens with a scene from Iron Man and the line “Wake up, Daddy’s home” – perhaps a reference to an expression used by Nato chief Mark Rutte, who once referred to US President Donald Trump as “daddy”.

What follows, in rapid fire, are clips from male actors cast as heroes, including Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, and Keanu Reeves in John Wick.

Hollywood’s heroics are interspersed with footage released by the US military showing real strikes on various targets.

Actor and film-maker Ben Stiller has called on the White House to remove a clip in the video from Tropic Thunder, a satirical 2008 film about war movies that he directed and co-wrote.

“We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie,” Stiller wrote on X.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth also appears briefly, in a clip taken from a real briefing, where he says “F-A” before a clip from a Transformers movie says “time to find out”, using a CGI autobot.

The reference here is to a crude expression popular in the Trump administration, used to describe its uncompromising attitude towards any adversary: “F-A-F-O” or “F*** around and find out”.

In a second post, the White House interspersed real war footage with a scene from video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in which the player’s character is heard repeatedly saying “Ah s***, here we go again”, before footage of strikes on Iranian targets.

Trump’s campaign was marked by a rage-baiting style of communications, flouting the decorum of past presidents to key into the internet’s penchant for trolling and dunking, borrowing from video games and cinema for memes, and creating AI posts.

Trump’s social media has not shifted tone since he took office.

Last month, he posted a racist clip depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys, and made no apology for it.

Earlier in his presidency, when millions of “No Kings” protesters took to the streets across the United States to decry his style of governance, he posted a fake AI video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labelled “King Trump” that dumps excrement on crowds of protesters.

– Agence France-Presse