It’s day seven of “Operation Epic Fury” – and the White House is posting through it. The war in Iran that Team Trump wants to show us is tailored for the short attention spans of the vertical video era.

Consider this clip posted on X by the official White House account last night, which intersperses declassified footage of US drones hitting their targets with scenes from Gladiator, Iron Man, Braveheart, Top Gun: Maverick and Yu-Gi Oh. Or the video from earlier in the week that cuts between planes and bunkers being blown up and… SpongeBob SquarePants. The Israel Defense Forces’ X account has been equally out of pocket, while UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s TikTok aping the White House style is, like Starmer, just a bit sad.

Then we have the daily press conferences from the face of the conflict, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “This was never meant to be a fair fight,” he says, soundtracked by Hans Zimmer-esque strings as he talks up the might and precision of the US effort. “We have only just begun to fight.” The hawkish Hegseth of the Houthi groupchat is resurgent with the administration on war footing.

These videos come in........

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