Analytical Paper: The Iran–Israel–United States Confrontation Has Ushered in a New Generation of Information Warfare
The Politics and Society Institute has published an analytical paper titled “Perceptions of War: The Symbolic Structure of the Sixth Generation of Warfare.” The paper examines the Iran–Israel–U.S. confrontation and its regional implications through a lens that focuses on the battle of narratives, propaganda, disinformation, and artificial intelligence, rather than on the military trajectory alone.
The paper, which emerged from a seminar held by the Institute under the same title and presented by Professor of Media Studies Dr. Bassem Tweissi, argues that the confrontation that erupted on 28 February 2026, as well as the earlier confrontation in June 2025, was not merely another episode in the propaganda wars between Iran and its adversaries. Rather, it marked the effective emergence of a new generation of information warfare, in which military strikes intersect with fabricated videos, competing narratives, audience influence, and even attempts to shape the large language models underpinning artificial intelligence.
The paper notes that, from the very first hours, the confrontation was accompanied by a broad wave of claims and fabricated footage, including videos alleging massive explosions in Tel Aviv, purported strikes on U.S. ships, and images said to show damage to U.S. bases in the Gulf. These were matched by American and Israeli narratives claiming the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the imminent collapse of the Iranian regime, and defections within its leadership.
According to the paper, the world is entering a more complex phase of information warfare, in which victory is no longer tied only to what is achieved on the battlefield, but also to the ability to impose a persuasive narrative about the meaning of the war: who started it, who is defending, who is attacking, and who has the authority to declare victory.
The paper analyzes the three competing narratives that shaped the confrontation. On the Iranian side, a discourse emerged portraying Iran as a “victorious victim,” emphasizing the illegality of the war, human suffering, the amplification of divisions within the United States and Israel, and the depiction of American and Israeli leaders as reckless. The paper also highlights a significant shift in Iranian propaganda away from traditional religious discourse toward a more nationalist and symbolic language that invokes Iran as a state, civilization, and historical entity.
As for the Israeli narrative, the paper argues that it moved beyond the traditional model of hasbara toward a model based on automation, AI-generated content, precision audience targeting, and efforts to influence the information and algorithmic environment. This narrative focused on portraying Iran as an existential threat, framing the military strikes as preemptive self-defense, invoking the idea of “liberating the Iranian people,” and manufacturing an image of decisive victory from the earliest days of the confrontation.
By contrast, the paper concludes that American propaganda was the weakest among the three parties, due to problems of credibility and contradictions between claims that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been completely destroyed and later efforts to justify the war on the grounds of an imminent Iranian nuclear threat. The paper sees this as evidence of Washington’s declining ability to “manufacture consent,” in a striking shift since the Vietnam War.
The paper stresses that one of the most important transformations lies in the shift from “manufacturing consent” to “manufacturing reality.” Propaganda no longer seeks merely to persuade the public of a specific position; rather, it aims to produce an entire cognitive environment in which images, clips, and messages are repeated to the point that they can shape public consciousness and political behavior.
The paper warns of an even more dangerous level of information warfare: the targeting of large language models through the injection of directed content into the digital space. Such practices may affect the data on which these models are trained and make their knowledge outputs biased in favor of particular narratives.
With regard to the concept of victory, the paper argues that all parties failed to establish a unified definition of it. Iran linked victory to resilience, regime survival, and the ability to retaliate. Israel tied it to the precision of its strikes, intelligence penetration, and the targeting of leadership figures. The United States presented it as the halting of Iran’s nuclear project and the coercion of Tehran back to the negotiating table.
The paper gives particular attention to the regional repercussions, especially for Jordan and neighboring states. It argues that small and medium-sized states find themselves affected by, rather than active agents within, the battle of narratives, becoming targets of intersecting Iranian, Israeli, and American narratives without necessarily being direct parties to the conflict.
The paper calls for the development of independent national capacities to monitor disinformation and construct self-generated narratives, rather than merely reacting to the narratives of major powers. It also recommends establishing permanent national units to monitor disinformation, investing in media and digital literacy, tracking the impact of artificial intelligence and large language models on the formation of public knowledge, and strengthening cooperation between research centers and media institutions in states affected by the conflict.
The paper concludes by stressing that the next war will be fought first in the realm of perception, and that victory in sixth-generation warfare is no longer measured by battlefield outcomes alone, but by the ability to impose a persuasive narrative about the meaning of that victory. Those who do not possess their own narrative will, sooner or later, find themselves trapped inside someone else’s.
To read and download the full paper, click here