On the morning of April 21, Trump posted an image of eight women on Truth Social, claimed they were Iranian dissidents set to be executed, and demanded that Tehran release them. Detractors, and several Iranian sources, claimed the women were AI-generated. A day later Trump claimed the women would no longer be executed and that he’d saved them.

The truth is that the women are real and many are still in danger. Trump’s post made real Iranian women who protested the Iranian regime appear fake. The story speaks to a moment we’re in where it’s become impossible to parse truth from lies online. This was already difficult before AI-generated pictures and video. Now it feels impossible.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Mahsa Alimardani is here to tell us the story. Alimardani is the Associate Director of Technology Threats and Opportunities at WITNESS.

• Eight real women turned into AI propaganda
• Real crimes bastardized into regime propaganda
• “We need to come to terms with the fact that our information environment is structurally different.”
• Content Credentials as a partial solution
• How AI is supercharging our chosen reality tunnels
• The cycle of uprising and repression in Iran
• The structure of Iran’s internet and how its blackouts work
• Domestic intranet as an alternative form of communication
• AI-generated Lego propaganda videos
• Iran Reframed
• Explosive Media’s deep connections to the Islamic Republic
• Politics as fandom, fandom as politics
• “Everything is becoming flattened.”
• “The onus on the person scrolling is a bit unfair.”

Mahsa Alimardani’s LinkedIn

The Real Iranian Women Protesters Trump Made Look Synthetic

In the Room With Iran’s Social Media Savants

How AI Content Detection is Being Weaponized in the Iran War

Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War

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Kim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham’s wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high school in Pyongyang. American protestants once spread the gospel in northwest Korea and found fertile ground for their gospel message. Kim listened, learned, and used those teachings to shape a cult of personality that rules North Korea to this day.

On this episode of Angry Planet I’m joined by Wall Street Journal China bureau chief Jonathan Cheng to talk about his new book Korean Messiah. Cheng’s work is an exploration of the origins of North Korea and Kim’s deep ties to American Christianity.

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• Angry Planet as dress rehearsal
• Billy Graham in the Hermit Kingdom
• 19th century Protestant missionaries in Korea
• Presbyterians in the untamed northwest
• Untangling the history of a self-made godking
• The Kim Song Ju nativity
• Women without names
• Attending church during the Fire and Fury period
• The Soviet era
• Leading from beyond the grave
• Kim bombs his first public appearance

Buy Korean Messiah

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded March 24, 2026. Subscribe at angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes first and commercial free.

Last week an article published in Al Jazeera by an academic at the University of Doha in Qatar proposed something that felt crazy to some western war watchers: America and Israel’s strategy in Iran is working.

On this episode of Angry Planet, author Muhanad Seloom is here to explain his position. Seloom is an assistant professor of international politics and security at the University of Doha. He’s also an Iraqi who lived through the Iran-Iraq war and both US invasions. From his perspective, the US has degraded Iran’s ability to hurt its neighbors in the long term and changed the regime.

What comes next is a more complicated question.

• Why did this war even start?
• Setting aside morality and legality to look at ground truths
• “Iran is much weaker”
• Missile production, missile range
• The highly enriched uranium is in one place
• “The regime has changed. Whether we like it or not, the regime has changed.”
• The case against the new Khamenei
• What is it like to live nextdoor to Iran?
• There’s a reason no one is standing up for Iran
• Why isn’t the GCC doing more?
• What happens if we pick up and leave?
• What’s the plan for what happens next?
• “It’s not easy to rise up.”
• Charging tolls on Hormuz
• “I have to say this: I am against the war in any way.”
• What about the JCPOA?
• A great unanswered question of history
• Air campaigns don’t win wars
• …did America really lose in Afghanistan and Iraq?
• “War is hell.”

Labelling Ethno-Political Groups as Terrorists

The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why

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