Hollywood seeded Iran war narrative for years – Wikileaks

Screenwriters in Hollywood who “say they are Jewish” have been planting pro-war narratives about Iran in mainstream entertainment for more than a decade, Wikileaks has claimed.

Israel launched airstrikes on Iran earlier this month, claiming Tehran was close to creating a nuclear weapon. Over the weekend, the US also directly joined the conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

In a post on X on Sunday, Wikileaks stated that Hollywood writers “who say they are Jewish” have been “planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years,” citing productions such as Top Gun: Maverick, Homeland, 24, and The Fifth Estate.

The group shared a clip of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s speech at Oxford Union from 2013. In the video, he discussed The Fifth Estate – a biographical drama about Wikileaks – which opens with a side plot about a fictional Iranian nuclear bomb project.

Assange recalled that the opening scene depicts Iranian scientists in Tehran assembling a bomb, with one character stating that the device could be operational within six months.

“How is it that such a lie got into a script about Wikileaks?” Assange asked, noting that at the time, 16 US intelligence agencies had already found that Tehran did not have a nuclear weapons program.

“It is an attack against Iran,” Assange said, claiming that the scene “fans the flames to start a war with Iran” and served the interests of the “people in the system that want the war.”

Prior to Israel’s latest strikes, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US intelligence agencies stated there was no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. 

Nevertheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to insist that Tehran was on the brink of creating a bomb – a claim he has repeated for decades. At the UN General Assembly in 2012, he infamously used a cartoon bomb illustration to warn that Iran was “months away” from a nuclear weapon, and made comparable statements throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Israel’s attack has drawn international condemnation, including from Russia, which has said the strikes were illegal. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the operation “an unprovoked aggression.”

US involvement in Israel’s campaign has also drawn criticism, with Moscow comparing it to the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, which was started over false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran has also met pushback from inside the White House. According to Reuters, Vice President J.D. Vance – an Iraq War veteran – opposed joining the Israeli offensive and warned during internal discussions that Israel was dragging the US into another war.