Operation Sloppy Fury
- Stated Press
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
“Truth is the first casualty of war” Aeschylus, c. 525-456BC / U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917.
As the Israeli and US war on Iran blasts through its second week, it shows no sign of slowing down. The headlines are rapid, dramatic and unabating with the 13thUS service person killed, a Tomahawk missile filmed striking a school where over 150 Iranian school girls were killed, at least one more person killed in central Israel, oil facilities, desalination plants in Iran and the Gulf States being struck, and Iran’s oil hub, Kharg Island, potentially earmarked for seaizure by US Marines.
Amidst the disaster, the question of truth remains, with 313 people in Qatar being arrested for “spreading rumors” and filming where they shouldn’t have been filming. An echo of last year’s Israeli policy that made it illegal to film any site where an Iranian missile had struck without prior approval from the authorities. These policies have not seemed to have changed over the past months, if anything they are becoming more widespread.
So what is real?
In the corners of the internet, hidden in the cracks of well curated algorithms, one can stumble upon genuine videos of missiles raining down on Israel. These missiles make contact, explode, and send bursts of light into the nighttime skies. In some of these videos it is not just one or two lone rockets, but multiple large and powerful rockets smashing into targets and landing in relatively close proximity to each other.
However, with the ever-expanding capabilities of AI video generation we are also seeing AI-made content, which has been becoming harder and harder to distinguish from reality. Video was once an irrefutable proof of an event, now we have to doubt and scrutinize everything we see before us. On X (formerly Twitter) users have been asking Elon Musk’s Grok if a video is AI, receiving replies both in the affirmative and the negative from the supposed digital oracle. When AI itself cannot distinguish what is AI, the goal has been achieved. Our sense of the war has changed yet again and not for the better. In the face of the all too familiar disinformation, now users are lamenting the “AI slop” that challenges their abilities at distinguishing what is real.
There were even quite absurd rumours that Netanyahu was dead. Of course a video of him ordering a coffee in Tel Aviv then came out as the proof of him being alive. This was met with people replying with videos of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and non other than they now dead Ayatollah Khomeini ordering the exact same coffee, making the same gestures, from the same coffee shop in Tel Aviv. Fancy that.
The issue we have now though is that AI slop is not the only slop we have to contend with. How else can one describe the narrative coming out of the White House other than slop? The president who promised no more “forever wars” is now waging a war which is also not a war? Why did this start? Take your pick! it was a preemptive strike, it was because Israel was going to strike anyway, there was an imminent threat, they were still developing nuclear weapons, or we have actually been at war with them for 20 years already they started it and we are just replying now. It is almost serendipitous how technology has risen to meet the political tactics of the American president. In a landscape without constants, where the narrative of why a bomb is being dropped can change from the time it was released to when it hits its target. Where words have lost their meaning.
But through the noise perhaps one may indulge into some of the narrative. Israel claims that they are acting in defence against their enemies, validating what we partly know. Iranian missiles are striking Tel Aviv and are meeting their targets despite the Israeli line of air defence. Trump did condemn “forever wars” and true to his word, completed the American invasion of Venezuela with unprecedented speed and precision. Most importantly on September 5, 2025, the name of the US Department of Defence was changed to the Department of War.
Though we may try to act confused, the greater picture is representative of reality. There is no smoke without a fire. We should stop engaging in arguments about the specifics with those who wish to limit the conversation to the exact pixels that indicate the “fakeness” of a video. Instead we should see the human cost both in victims of war and for us who leave conversations with such aforementioned individuals feeling more tired and weakened than when we entered them. There is no ambiguity about the meaning of the word “war” and it is staring us right in the face in the form of those big red numbers at the gas station. No amount of AI-spin, or narrative slop can change how much ordinary people, American or not, are going to be paying at the pumps.
Sources: 1. At least one person has just been killed at a missile impact site in central Israel, said Magen David Adom, the Israeli emergency service.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/09/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon 2. Qatari authorities have arrested 313 people for spreading “rumors” and photographing and sharing videos that contained “misinformation” during the war, the country’s interior ministry said on Monday. The authoritarian countries of the Persian Gulf maintain tight control over information in their countries and have warned people against taking videos of Iranian attacks.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/09/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon 3. Israel Strikes Oil Facilities: The Israeli military struck several Iranian fuel sites, sending huge balls of fire and smoke into the air and causing explosions in Tehran and the neighboring city of Karaj. The attacks appeared to be the first on the country’s energy infrastructure since the war began.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/09/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon 4. U.S. Service Members: Another American service member has died in the war with Iran, the Pentagon said on Sunday, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed in the conflict to seven.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/09/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon 5. Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar speaks to the media as he visits an impact site in Haifa following Iran's missile strike on Israel, on June 20, 2025. Israeli authorities have banned foreign media from broadcasting from impact areas without prior approval.
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