Video games, the Iranian regime’s new propaganda tool

Reading time: 2 min — Spotted on Wired

To exert more influence on its youth, the Islamic Republic of Iran now relies on video games, reports Wired. And especially on the very recent Commander of the Resistance: Amerli Battlewhere the player takes on the role of Qassem Soleimani, a major general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards who died in 2020 during a US drone attack in Iraq.

Influencing through play

In Iran, this soldier is a controversial figure, accused of numerous targeted assassinations as well as human rights violations. In January 2022, a statue bearing his likeness was also burned. But the objective of the game is, on the contrary, to make Soleimani appear as a hero and to create his myth. And for that, the regime is counting on the revival of its video game industry.

“The propaganda games represent the way of thinking that the government wants to impose on the youth, confirms to Wired a former Iranian developer who worked on similar products. The presentation of the general in the game is totally out of step with what the Iranians really think. The state wants to change public opinion through video games.”

A sector dominated by the regime

If the Islamic revolution of 1979 led to the banishment of all technology for personal use, from the 1990s, it made a comeback. The very first all-Iranian video game dates from 1995, and it quickly attracted the interest of the state, which saw this technology no longer as a tool that corrupted but as a tool that could serve it.

The first games in which we fight the enemies of Iran appear, and during the 2000s, the video game industry in Iran is flourishing. In 2007, the Iranian Foundation for Computer and Video Games was even created, which will support independent developers – as long as their games do not contradict the state.

But this golden age of Iranian video games came to an abrupt end in 2014, when the American company Electronic Arts released Battlefield 3. In this first-person shooter, American soldiers fight Iranian soldiers, presented as the antagonists. This representation provokes the anger of Iran, which bans it throughout the country. The event put a major brake on the entire sector.

Developers are less and less supported by the state and operating licenses are becoming extremely difficult to obtain. Eventually, the sector is dominated by the regime and independent developers no longer create or leave the country in order to be able to do so.

Mutility and developer

In the world of propaganda games, a figure has stood out since the end of the 2010s: Mahdi Jafari Jozani. A member of Bassidj, a paramilitary organization responsible for internal security, he launched three games between 2020 and 2022: Ambassador of Love, Moktar: The Season of Rebellion and finally Commander of the resistance.

These three games depict Iran according to the will of the regime, that is, as a theocracy surrounded by enemies, and all offer a revisionist version of Iranian history. Something to engage young minds a little more.