Within this past week, conflict has erupted in the Mena region as the United States together with Israel launched attacks on Iran. Since the first set of strikes in the last days of February, the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has been confirmed dead, over 100 school children were reportedly killed by U.S. strike, casualties have begun to count up, and conflict has expanded to involve other states in the area, such as the U.A.E., Qatar, Israel, and more. Globally, the response to the conflict has reportedly been somewhat mixed, though at least in America, a majority of voters disapprove of President Trump’s actions in Iran, according to CNN. The conflict was initiated by the U.S. after several weeks of tense diplomatic talks with Iran, and as of right now has no signs of stopping–just yesterday the Senate failed to go on with resolution that would have provided some obstacles to the military’s continued operations. With all of this going on, just a few hours ago, the official White House account on X posted what can really only be described as a hype reel featuring imagery from the recent Call of Duty titles.
The video begins with a clip of a player in the newer Call of Duty: Modern Warfare titles using the Mass Guided Bombs killstreak in multiplayer, which similar to the Tactical Nuke in other games in the series, automatically wins the match for the player’s side. The rest of the video then showcases footage of what are presumably aerial captures of recent ballistic strikes in Iran. And to solidify the connection the White House is making here to the FPS series, they’ve included voicelines from the game like “we’ve taken control” and HUD elements like the minimap and points notification players receive when they get kill. The responses below the post range wildly from users seemingly supporting the gloating sentiment expressed in the video to users condemning it and or alluding to recent controversies surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency. This also isn’t the first time the White House X account has published controversial posts; previously landing in hot water after allegedly comparing undocumented immigrants to the Flood from the Halo series. A few years ago, this type of crass propaganda would not even be considered to be made public by the U.S., but times have changed.