Donald Trump posted an AI video showing Iran's Kharg Island destroyed, hours after real US airstrikes hit rocket launchers on Larak Island.
Page A9From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 31 August 2026
U.S. strikes Iran, oil hits $90 a barrel, and Trump posts an AI video of the wreckage.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what happened and what didn't happen, because the narrative's gotten sloppy. The United States struck Iran-linked targets, Iran responded, and global oil ticked up to ninety dollars a barrel — that's a market reacting to uncertainty, that's not a crisis, that's just Tuesday for the futures desk. Standard deterrence posture, standard market response, nothing here that should — actually, ninety dollars a barrel is the highest it's been in a while, so let's not pretend the market's shrugging this off, because it isn't.
On the video: the President posted footage of Kharg Island appearing to be destroyed, hours after the first strikes in a month. Now, was this footage generated by artificial intelligence? Yes. Does that mean anything happened that didn't happen? No — I mean, it means the specific images shown didn't happen, but the strikes themselves did happen, those are two separate — okay, I see how that sounds. Let me restate. The strikes were real. The video of the strikes was not. Those are different categories of true, and I understand why a viewer watching an AI rendering of a real war might have some questions about which category they're being shown.…
…(cont) Here's the thing the critics miss: leadership requires communicating strength quickly, and sometimes the real footage isn't available on the timeline the moment demands. So you use what conveys the message. That's not deception, that's — okay, if I'm being fully accurate, that probably is close to the ordinary definition of deception, but it's deception in service of a strategic communications objective, which in this administration's view is a meaningfully different thing than just, you know, making things up about a live war for the cameras.
The bottom line the administration wants you to take away is this: the strikes happened, Iran struck back, the oil market moved ninety dollars' worth of nervous, and the video — the video was auxiliary. It was never meant to be the record. The strikes were the record. The video was just what got posted first, and fastest, and to the widest audience, and was fake. I'll allow that last part undermines the point I was making, but the strikes were real, and I'd like that to be the headline.
“Real bombs, a real oil spike, and the President's proof of damage is a video his own team generated. When the war is real but the receipts are synthetic, ask who's paying the ninety dollars at the pump for the special effects.”
“The video was for messaging purposes, to convey capability quickly, not to serve as a battle damage assessment — I mean, it does look like real footage — no, it's clearly a rendering, probably, I'd have to check.”
The receipts
The first attacks in a month jolted energy markets. The average U.S. gasoline price remained 37 percent higher since the war began.
Iran says it targeted U.S. bases in Jordan after CENTCOM announced strikes on rocket launchers on an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait of Hormuz remains the primary flashpoint in the conflict.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.