In the aftermath of Israel’s stunning air campaign against Iran—an operation that exposed the full vulnerability of the Islamic Republic’s defenses—a curious and familiar phenomenon has unfolded across Iranian state media: A theatrical proclamation of victory.
This narrative, wrapped in the garb of resistance and redemption, is not new. But in this instance, it reaches near-hallucinatory proportions, as Iranian officials boast of damage inflicted upon the United States and Israel, even while their skies burned and their proxies crumbled.
At the heart of this propaganda offensive lies a core contradiction: a regime eager to project strength, even in the face of undeniable military defeat. Iranian media proudly proclaimed that Israel and the United States had been “forced into a ceasefire” after sustaining “severe losses,” thanks to the “heroic resistance” of the Iranian military and its regional allies.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile salvos—fired into the desert with limited precision—were rebranded as devastating blows that had allegedly crippled U.S. bases in the Gulf and overwhelmed Israeli air defenses.
In reality, it was Iran that absorbed the brunt of the damage. Israel’s strikes—launched with clinical precision—destroyed dozens of military sites, including key nuclear facilities, missile silos, and command centers. Many of Iran’s advanced radar systems were disabled or bypassed entirely. Iranian leaders, caught off-guard, scrambled to salvage dignity not on the battlefield but in the narrative war at home.
The Khamenei doctrine: Projecting strength amid ruin
The regime’s propaganda blitz is closely tied to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s longstanding strategy of psychological projection. Even in previous confrontations, Khamenei has emphasized the importance of narrative dominance over material reality. Following the American assassination of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran similarly launched missiles into Iraqi airspace and declared a “crushing response,” despite causing limited damage and no fatalities.
This time, the spin machine went into even higher gear. Khamenei himself took to X (formerly Twitter) in a series of posts echoing defiance: “The Zionists and Americans may have struck, but they will drown in the swamp of our resistance,” read one, while another read,
“Trump is a criminal who begs for ceasefires when his own bases lie in ruin. This is divine retribution.”
These posts, while outwardly bold, were clearly intended to mask deep strategic failure. The Ayatollah’s rhetoric was not about battlefield success—it was about survival, both physical and psychological. In totalitarian regimes where truth is subservient to ideology, narrative control becomes the final refuge of the desperate.
This messaging also served a second purpose: To portray strength specifically against U.S. President Donald Trump, whose return to the global stage as a key player in the 12-day war’s diplomatic resolution rattled the regime.
Khamenei’s messaging was not just about humiliating Israel, but about attempting to demonstrate that Trump—long a nemesis of the Iranian regime—had once again “begged” for an off-ramp.
The Putin factor and externalized blame
Simultaneously, Iranian media sought scapegoats to explain the military failure. State-aligned platforms such as KhabarOnline ran stories blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for withholding advanced S-400 missile defense systems. Had Moscow delivered those systems, the narrative claimed, Iran would have “repelled the Zionist aggression.”
This blame-shifting is deeply rooted in Middle Eastern cultural dynamics, particularly the obsession with preserving honor. As I’ve observed throughout my career, admitting failure is seen not as humility, but as weakness—an unpardonable stain on personal and national prestige. Leaders cannot acknowledge their own strategic blunders; they must attribute failure to the treachery of supposed allies or the incompetence of subordinates.
The scapegoating of Putin serves several critical functions:
- It shields the regime from domestic accusations of weakness or mismanagement.
- It reframes military defeat as geopolitical betrayal.
- It maintains the illusion of strength by deflecting blame outward.
The Bernard Lewis parable: Why no one learns from failure
This cultural resistance to admitting fault has profound consequences. The late Professor Bernard Lewis once recounted a telling story in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. Following Egypt’s humiliating defeat, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, desperate to understand what went wrong, invited a Pakistani team to investigate. Why Pakistan? Because Nasser knew that no Egyptian would risk his career—or his life—by telling the truth.
The Pakistani investigators interviewed numerous Egyptian officials and commanders. But every single one denied any responsibility. Each blamed someone else: The air force blamed the army, the army blamed the intelligence services and the intelligence services blamed Nasser himself, though never directly. The result? There was no clear picture of what had gone wrong. No accountability. No reform.
Iran today is repeating that same pattern. When failure is taboo and blame is a contagion passed like a hot potato, the nation becomes trapped in a cycle of delusion. The regime cannot fix what it refuses to face.
Do the Iranian people believe it?
The larger and more haunting question remains: Are the Iranian people actually buying into this manufactured narrative of victory?
The truth is, we simply don’t know—and that in itself is telling. In free societies, public opinion can be measured. In Iran, expression is criminalized and dissent is dangerous. People may joke privately about the regime’s inflated claims, but very few dare voice such doubts aloud. Fear hangs over Iran like the smog that chokes Tehran’s skies: pervasive, suffocating, and difficult to quantify.
Independent polling is virtually nonexistent, and even social media offers only a fragmented glimpse. Occasionally, a viral meme will circulate mocking the regime’s propaganda—photos of a flattened Iranian radar site labeled “Zionist defeat,” or sarcastic captions under grainy missile-launch footage.
But these are exceptions that prove the rule: Iranians are still afraid. And fear, more than ideology, is the glue that holds the regime’s propaganda edifice together.
That said, the mere existence of these snarky responses—and the regime’s aggressive efforts to suppress them—suggests that the state itself doubts the efficacy of its narrative. A confident government does not need to jail teenagers for mocking slogans or censor Telegram channels for posting satellite imagery.
Conclusion: When propaganda becomes the only weapon
What we are witnessing is a regime that has lost its ability to control reality, but still retains control over perception, at least domestically. It is the political equivalent of stage makeup: thick, exaggerated, and entirely disconnected from the truth underneath. Iran’s leaders know they were struck hard. They know their defenses failed. And they know that the world is watching.
But as long as the people there remain too afraid to speak, the charade can continue.
In the end, the real casualty may not be a weapons depot or an underground nuclear lab, but the Iranian people themselves—trapped in a system where truth is dangerous, honor is a weapon and lies are the only thing keeping the lights on.