In messages directed at the American public, Iranian officials have published articles stressing the disastrous impact of the war on oil prices and the US economy. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been targeting US officials directly about rising costs and military spending.
On Wednesday, Ghalibaf shared a news story about US inflation rising to 3.7 percent last month along with a collage of negative headlines on the US economy. The social media post also featured a comic strip from the Road Runner cartoon showing Wile E Coyote building a catapult that misfires and launches a boulder at him.
"Let's 'play the percentages'. Not in odds, but in the % increases," Ghalibaf wrote in a message to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been leading the sanctions campaign against Iran.
Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, said Tehran is looking to increase the political cost of the war for the Trump administration. "It's not necessarily that they're trying to get Democrats in power or manipulate US politics in a certain direction, other than just overall increasing the costs on this issue of the Iran war, and just playing that game of information warfare and getting out their own narrative and propaganda as well," Toossi told Al Jazeera.
The Republican Party is seeking to retain control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm vote, but the Democratic Party, which largely opposes the war with Iran, is mounting strong challenges across the electoral map, including in traditionally conservative areas such as Texas.