In a post on his X account, Qalibaf invoked the film’s famous red-pill and blue-pill scene, declaring that all ten options presented are bad and urging people to “break the manufactured matrix” and leave it behind.
His message was accompanied by a dark image featuring Morpheus, a fictional character from the science-fiction film, offering ten different options instead of the two pills featured in the original scene.
“Ten pills, all bad. No red, no blue. All soot. You don’t have to take any, but if you do, you will take all. Break the manufactured matrix. Leave,” Qalibaf wrote.
In “The Matrix”, the red pill and blue pill serve as metaphors for a fundamental choice: taking the red pill means confronting an unsettling truth and breaking free from an illusion, while taking the blue pill means remaining within the familiar, unquestioned version of reality.
The scene, featuring Morpheus offering the protagonist the two pills, has since become a widely recognized cultural reference to awakening, questioning dominant narratives, and rejecting manufactured perceptions of reality.
Qalibaf’s post reworks that iconic scene into a pointed political satire. Rather than offering two alternatives, the Morpheus depicted in the image extends ten options through ten hands, each labeled with an indicator of worsening conditions for the US: rising mortgages, gas prices, debt, diesel prices, and the number of killed soldiers, alongside falling jet numbers, real wages, stock values, and reputation, as well as a decline in the legacy associated with the war of aggression against Iran.
The imagery presents the US as trapped in a situation in which every available choice carries a cost, mocking the consequences of Washington’s military campaign against Iran. By depicting all ten options as undesirable, Qalibaf challenges the narrative that the US can emerge from the war without significant economic, military, and political repercussions.