In the days following U.S. strikes on nuclear sites in Iran in June 2025, a screen recording of a video U.S. President Donald Trump allegedly posted circulated on multiple platforms — including X (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived) — collectively receiving millions of views.
The video was a parody of The Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann," in which the words "Barbara Ann" were swapped out for "bomb Iran," with additional lyrics, such as: "Went to a mosque. Gonna throw some rocks" and "Time to turn Iran into a parking lot."
Although several users expressed skepticism about the post, the screen recordings were authentic. Trump really did post a parody video (archived) on his social media platform Truth Social, displaying footage of B-2 bombers dropping explosives in a parody of "Barbara Ann" on June 24, 2025. The post received more than 32,600 likes, as of this writing.
(Truth Social user @realDonaldTrump)
The parodied version of the song is not new. American band Vince Vance & the Valiants released the song in 1980 — at the time of the 1979-1981 hostage crisis in Iran in which Iranian students in Tehran took dozens of Americans hostage.
Although The Beach Boys popularized the song in 1965, doo-wop group The Regents originally released the song four years earlier, in 1961. The original song features completely different lyrics to the parodied version. One verse of the original is as follows:
Went to a dance, lookin' for romance
Saw Barbara Ann, so I thought I'd take a chance
On Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann (bar, bar, bar, bar, Barbara Ann)
You take my hand (bar, bar, bar, bar, take my hand)
You got me rockin' and a rollin' (ho-oh), rockin' and a reelin'
Barbara Ann, bar, bar, bar, bar (c'mon, black sheep)
The same verse in the parodied version is:
Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks
Tell the Ayatollah, "Gonna put you in a box!"
Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb Iran
Our country's got a feelin'
Really hit the ceilin', bomb Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
This also wasn't the first time a prominent political figure had referenced the song. During the U.S. presidential campaign in 2007, former U.S. Sen. John McCain sang the song to a crowd in South Carolina after an audience member asked him when the U.S. would send an "airmail message" to Iran. McCain later claimed in interviews that the reference was a joke.
In sum, the claim that Trump posted a video featuring the song "Bomb Iran" by Vince Vance & the Valiants — a parody of "Barbara Ann" by The Beach Boys — is true. The parody song has been around since 1980, when audiences popularized it during the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis.