The meme war between various Iranian embassies and Donald Trump has erupted in full force this week, following the president’s embarrassing blunder involving an AI-generated image of himself bearing a striking resemblance to Jesus.

A recent post on X from Iran’s Embassy in Tajikistan took direct aim at Trump’s artificially created image, sharing a clip depicting Jesus physically attacking the president and apparently casting him into hell. The brutally graphic AI-generated video showed blood pouring from Trump’s head before he plunged into a blazing pit.

Having been posted on Tuesday afternoon, the clip had already amassed 14 million views by Wednesday.

It represents an increasingly bizarre development online amid the war in Iran, as memes and AI imagery have come to dominate the online conversation surrounding the conflict.

Official Iranian accounts have been consistently going viral with posts ridiculing Trump and the U.S. While AI is being used to power actual weapons on the battlefield, it is simultaneously being wielded as a weapon online.

“We live in weird times, man,” one person replied.

“This is not what I thought they meant when they said AI would change how we fight wars,” said someone else.

The use of online memes during wartime has surged in popularity only recently, having first gained widespread traction during the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Earlier this week, the Iranian Embassy in Thailand shared an image designed to mimic a Trump campaign poster. Rather than displaying the year 2028, it bore the words “Trump $20.28 per gallon”, accompanied by the caption, “Are you ready, folks?”

Fuel prices across the U.S. continue to climb amid the ongoing conflict, having surged by more than 30% since the U.S. and Israel carried out strikes on Iran in February.

This followed the account’s previous viral moment when it posted, “The new move from Trump against our country is so comical that we don’t even have a meme for it,” after the president announced plans to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.

While Trump ultimately deleted the original AI-generated image of himself portrayed as Jesus following widespread backlash, Iran has produced a series of viral and largely well-received posts in recent weeks.

President Trump’s use of memes has unfortunately begun attracting far more public scepticism than amusement, and regardless of whether he is deploying them as a distraction, the strategy no longer appears to be working in his favour.