This week marks six months since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. In that time, US President Donald Trump has published at least 319 posts mentioning Iran on Truth Social, his social media platform – roughly one every 14 hours. Read in sequence, these posts, or “truths” as they are known on the platform, form a record of how a war was announced, prosecuted, declared won, negotiated and then reopened, all in the president’s own words.
Al Jazeera analysed these posts. Between February 28 and August 25, Trump posted at least 4,189 times on Truth Social, an average of 24 posts a day, or one every hour. One in every 13 mentioned Iran – 319 posts in total, or one every 14 hours.
While he posted at all hours, the most common time for his Iran posts was the morning in Washington, between 8 and 11am (13:00- ), corresponding to early evening in Tehran. The word cloud below provides a snapshot of the most commonly used terms. But the two that follow are not Iran’s leaders or its nuclear programme: they are his own name and his own country.
Trump refers to himself as “President Donald J Trump” or “President DJT” 221 times, more often than he mentions the Strait of Hormuz, nuclear weapons and Israel combined. His sign-off, “Thank you for your attention to this matter”, closes one in every four posts. In the weeks leading up to February 28, Iran was an occasional subject, appearing in 17 posts between January 1 and February 27, roughly one every three days.
The messaging blended hardline threats with transactional diplomacy. Trump applauded Iranian leadership for cancelling more than 800 scheduled hangings and expressed support for anti-regime protesters. He also threatened 25 percent tariffs on nations doing business with Iran, and repeatedly urged Tehran to negotiate, declaring: “MAKE A DEAL!” Then, on January 28, he announced that “a massive Armada is heading to Iran”.
Over the next month, the messaging escalated the threat of force with several mentions of “Operation Midnight Hammer”, the US military operation of June 2025 that targeted and severely damaged Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities towards the end of the 12-day war with Israel. On February 28 at 1:35am Eastern Time ( ), US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, at the direction of the president of the United States. Fifty-five minutes later, at , US President Donald Trump posted an eight-minute video to Truth Social providing more details about the US’s “major combat operations” in Iran.
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