Is there any compelling evidence that this was marketing done by Sony? Yes, the sniff test does not pass for me about the government officials advertising the device, but this Reddit thread[1] makes the whole story seem plausible. America and Japan really did impose restrictions on shipping to Iraq and people did eventually chain PS3s together for cheap computing.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/l3hp2i/did_s...

Apple used similar marketing tactics with G4 since it was "so powerful" it was under restricted export control, where in reality it was an outdated regulation that needed an update.