Donald Trump's 'Truths': How Social Posts Are Waging Iran Narrative War

Churchill's World War II scribbles. Rants by Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda man. Count Galeazzo Ciano's diary on Axis powers' decisions. Across the Atlantic, Roosevelt's secret notes.

War-time leaders routinely keep private journals and diaries or whisper secrets into tape-recorders. These may chronicle their thoughts and fears, or fighting, death, and devastation, or the impact on their people, or even military strategy and battle plans for a final push for victory.

But these often slumber beneath the leaders' pillows during the fighting, hidden from public view and released, if at all, years after the last bullet was fired and the last bomb dropped.

Donald Trump, however, seems to have no such compunction and unleashes his thoughts on social media daily, often hourly – blast after blast on Truth Social proclaiming America's 'greatness', denouncing 'scumbag' Iranians, threatening 'enemies', and brow-beating 'allies'.

Nearly a century's worth of such blasts – viral, unfiltered – fired since Feb 28, since the US and Israel attacked Iran in violation of international law and shocking the oil market, leading to fears of a global energy crisis and threatening to drag other Gulf states into the fighting.

Donald Trump's Truth Social homepage

Robert De Niro's 'spin doctor' in Wag the Dog got it right nearly 30 years ago; controlling imagery and narrative win wars as much as air strikes and missiles, perhaps more so today than ever.

And few understand that better than the US President, a man whose reality TV roots and penchant for 'big, bigger, and biggest' showmanship underscores his presidential outlook.

Truth Social, Trump's personal megaphone

The most recent blast was March 19; tit-for-tat Israeli-Iranian strikes on gas fields in South Pars and Qatar sent prices and supply crisis fears into overdrive, and drew Trump's attention.

The US President's (lengthy) post simultaneously distanced Washington from Tel Aviv's South Pars strike and warned Tehran not to retaliate (which it did anyway) on pain of an American counter "at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never witnessed before".

The day before he condemned Iran as "the NUMBER ONE STATE SPONSOR OF TERROR" and hours before that he trained his guns on 'allies' NATO and nations like Japan and South Korea, for not sending warships to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, to complain and then petulantly claim "… (the USA is) by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World".

It all began with the Feb 28 announcement that seemed to bypass the US State Department and even the Oval Office, traditional and sombre backdrops to pronounce the waging of war.

Trump the diplomat, on Truth Social

Since then Truth Social has become the rostrum from which foreign policy is announced, often in ALL CAPS and with one post contradicting the next and a third refuting both.

On March 15, Trump demanded NATO warships; 'Countries of the world that receive oil through the Hormuz must take care of that passage', he declared after claiming energy independence.

But UK, France, Germany, and others refused to commit and drew a rebuke. NATO is making a "very foolish mistake", he responded, before making an about-face and declaring "we no longer ‘need,' or desire, NATO… WE NEVER DID!"

The rant March 17 evening pulled in earlier showdowns with NATO – over defence budgets and contributions – to deliver another public diplomatic dressing down, labelling US-NATO ties a "one way street". "Thank you for you attention to this matter," Trump signed off as he does.

Screenshot from Truth Social account @realDonaldTrump

Posts over the South Pars gas field attack offers similar insights, i.e., diplomatic aggression and distancing the US from global pushback over skyrocketing gas prices.

Trump has used this diplomatic bull horn to target 'allies' and enemies from the European Union and Greenland to Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

For India this comes at a cost. Public remarks during Op Sindoor, Delhi's military response to the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, threaten to destablise narratives with incorrect information, from fighter jets being shot down to claiming a US role in securing a ceasefire.

And today, with the Hormuz crisis pushing oil prices to potentially catastrophic highs, many around the world might want to trade unapologetically loud Truth Social diplomacy for a softer, behind-the-scenes touch. But that is certainly not Donald Trump's style.