America’s poster-in-chief has a new rival.
While most Iranians are banned from the internet, one of the country’s growing figures is using social media to take on President Donald Trump.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 64, has been using Trump’s wartime style of communication, sending snarls and memes in the English language in an apparent attempt to fight the US president’s influence on media and financial markets.
A decade and a half younger than Trump, Ghalibaf favors the fast-paced, understated style of the president, who sent an astounding 6,800 Social Truth messages last year.
It comes amid a broader push by Iran and its allies in an escalating information war, flooding the Internet with memes and deceptive AI-generated content attacks on American bases. The state media even got in on the act, mocking Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We appreciate you,” Ghalibaf told his nearly half a million followers on Sunday via X. “The pre-market so-called ‘news’ or ‘Truth’ is usually a setup for profit-taking,” he said, his latest allegation that Trump’s posts on Truth Social are a concerted effort to move the markets, either to profit or to curb price power.
The US government has strongly denied allegations of insider trading.
The Iranian speaker urged supporters to “do the opposite” of what Trump’s messages say, if they too want to make a profit.
“If they pump it, go short. If they dump it, go long,” he said. “You know the law.”
With more captions, Ghalibaf posted a photo early Sunday that was created by NBC News and shows an American early warning and control (or AWACS) aircraft being blown up from behind the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Next to a photo of the damaged plane, Ghalibaf wrote: “keep the damage minimal,” with three emojis conveying a “just a little” hand gesture. Initial reports indicated that the plane suffered minor damage during the attack on Iran.
Ghalibaf rose to prominence after a number of his top brass were killed in Israeli-US airstrikes. Among them was the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, creating a power vacuum largely filled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a powerful military, political and economic group.
Ghalibaf came from the ranks of the Guardian himself, and is believed to be among the inner circle of Mojtaba Khamenei, the ayatollah’s son and successor. The younger Khamenei did not appear in person after Iran said he was also injured in the strikes.
According to Trump, it was Ghalibaf who allowed 20 oil tankers to pass through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. “He is the one who approved the ships for me,” the president told the Financial Times newspaper.
But in public, the Iranian speaker is very hostile to the American president and his forces.
In his message on Sunday marking 30 days since the start of the war, he said Iran was “waiting for American troops to go on the ground to set them on fire.”
Meanwhile, he accused the president of trying to “jaw” the oil market, using public statements and social media to reassure investors and prevent price increases.
Another post involved him comparing the “No Kings” march through American cities this weekend to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
“Welcome to the party we started 47 years ago,” he wrote. “These are the people of Iran, and we accept this message.”
And he has mocked Trump’s changing war intentions, suggesting that the president’s intentions are now reduced to reopening the Strait of Hormuz – something that was the case before the US and Israel began bombing.
“They are playing 6D chess again!” Ghalibaf wrote along with three clapping emojis.
Trump’s second term has seen him more active than ever on social media, including a long list of tweets offering volatile updates on the war.
Shortly before markets opened on Monday, Trump praised what he said was “substantial progress” in the talks, although he also threatened to destroy Iran’s water and energy infrastructure if a deal is not reached soon. Ghalibaf and other Iranian officials often deny such progress.
Although the Iranian speaker is seen as a tough guy, he is never afraid to adapt his message to his audience.
“Ghalibaf shows a dual stance – reasonable when dealing with loyal allies and tough when faced with tough enemies,” Ali Alfoneh, an official at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told NBC News last week.
He is among the 1% of Iranians who currently have no access to the Internet, according to the monitoring group NetBlocks.
Only “state apparatchiks are allowed on the Internet,” NetBlocks said.
