فصلنامه مطالعات عملیات روانی
پیاپی 39 (بهار 1393)

Since a long time ago, man has attempted to gain and maintain power in order to protect himself and, later, dominate others and this struggle still persists. To fulfill this desire and dream, he has made use of every means and method. To this end, human beings and, later, states have equipped themselves with a variety of hardware to defend themselves and they have achieved great success in conquering and invading other lands. What has always been a concern for people and states and has preoccupied their minds is permanence of power. The further the time passes, the more eagerness the states have to gain access to the factors which make power permanent. Psychological operations constitute a kind of battle and widespread, pervasive conflict conducted by means of cultural, literary, artistic, advertising, linguistic and communication tools and methods in order to fulfill various ideological, intellectual, political, social, cultural, economic and other aims. The purpose of psychological operations is to defeat the enemy without fighting and shedding blood and by influencing and capturing human mind, intellect and emotions. Accordingly, depending on its theme, direction and designer, a psychological battle is fulfilled and becomes a good value or an anti-value. In today's world, man can turn into a good value whatever he wishes and he can turn into an anti-value whatever he wants. However, Quranic teachings are beyond human concepts; hence, it establishes and conducts psychological operations on the basis of the nature man and his communities. What clarifies the relationship between psychological operations and the truth and reality is their designer, implementer, direction and purpose.

Following the introduction of cell phone technology into the field of communication tools, we have witnessed the significant role played by this communication instrument in people’s individual and social lives. Since every kind of media is capable of changing political, cultural and social structures, the same capability can be imagined for the cell phone, particularly, due to its widespread use. Hence, introduction of this technology into the fields of governance and politics requires attention. Accordingly, in this paper, the media threats arising from the cell phone in the field of politics and the required coping strategies are evaluated on the basis of users’ views. Based on the obtained results, most users agree with the political threats of the cell phone: 48% of users agreed with the threat of “organized social emotions”, 63.3% agreed with the threat of “taking photographs and videos of political events”, 98.3% agreed with the threats of “facilitating the organization of subversive activities” and 98.5% agreed with the threat of “spreading rumors”. Also, the highest proportions of threat caused by the cell phone were evaluated to be “very high” (22.5%) and “high” (20%). Most of the users recommended functional solutions including “training” (35%) and “culture development” (23%).

Adoption of coercive economic measures is considered one of the effective forms of strategic psychological operations and a tool which contributes to its more desirable influence. Economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran entered a new phase in 2012 with the multilateral, multifaceted and multilayered embargo against Iran's oil industry. However, in spite of the sensitivity of energy fluctuations, lack of disruption in the energy market despite the discourse governing the technical and political reports and the expectation emanating from the geo-energy and geo-political position of Iran raises this assumption that in spite of the impact of energy security on the security of the Western countries, utilization of psychological operations tactics helped the West to impose oil embargo on Iran as a key component of economic sanctions process with the lowest cost. This research work, carried out on the basis of the applied, analytic-descriptive method, indicates that utilization of psychological operations along with the oil embargo was aimed at a) making the sanctions multilateral, b) assuring the West of energy security particularly reducing the harmful effects stemming from of omission Iran’s oil resources on the European Union and c) reinforcing the effects of sanctions inside Iran aimed at destabilization of the government; nonetheless, this measure has proved to be one the essential tools of reducing the adverse impacts of oil embargo on Iran.

Soft war is considered a serious threat to the cultural and value systems since it targets the underlying cultural foundation and identity of political systems and attempts to fulfill its predefined goals through a socio-cultural transformation process. Legitimacy decline, concerns of the world public opinion, growth of warmongering costs, extension of military expeditions, etc. associated with hard war have led to the selection and utilization of soft policies and cultural conflicts during the last few decades. Accordingly, after several decades, the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran came to the conclusion that they cannot deal with the Islamic system using military mechanisms, but rather they have to rely on soft, cultural projects so that they can fulfill their goals more easily reducing financial losses and casualties. For this reason, using the analytical-descriptive method, this paper attempts to look into soft war as a dangerous threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran and explicate the views of the Supreme Leader, Imam Khamenei, on soft war case by case. The findings suggest that, from the viewpoint of the Supreme Leader, the soft war coping strategies include such issues as acknowledgement of the existence of soft war, knowing the enemies, avoiding internal conflicts and maintaining unity and integrity, setting up free-thinking circles, enhancement of insight as a compass for dealing with soft war, cultural engineering, boosting selfconfidence and self-esteem and reinforcement of social capitals.

Although cyberspace, especially the Internet, has found its way into human life inthe recent decades, it has grown rapidly and has had a great impact on variousaspects man’s life. The growing development of information technology andthe Internet has created extensive changes in all aspects of human life includingpolitical, social, economic, defense and security areas. Currently, the Internet canplay a very important role in emotional security issues. Absolute freedom of speechand dissemination of news, rumors, unethical issues, political tensions, economicand socio-cultural issues all indicate the central role of cyberspace in psychologicalsecurity and mental health of the society. Hence, the present study was carriedout to evaluate the effect of cyberspace on the emotional security of universitystudents in Qazvin Province, Iran. The research method was survey and the sampleincluded 383 students. Data collection was carried out through the Maslow-Mahabad questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire. To answer theresearch questions, the collected data was analyzed by means of one-way ANOVAand content analysis aided by SPSS software. The results suggest that hours of usingthe Internet, the favorite Internet topics, and membership in social networks impacton the students’ emotional security.

Presidential elections in Iran have been accompanied by unique events in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this process, numerous unprecedented movements were formed against the political system. This study looks into the media practices of BBC Persian TV during the tenth presidential elections in Iran. It is a kind of field research and the method is descriptive survey. The population and sample include the experts of social, military, security and media issues and psychological operations. The sample consisted of 37 subjects selected through the availability sampling technique. Then, the required data were collected on the basis of a researcher-made questionnaire containing 25 items. Based on the respondents’ answers and the Friedman Test, BBC Persian TV utilized a range of PSYOP techniques in 2010 presidential elections, which have been identified and introduced here in the order of the most-frequently used and the most-frequently used ones.

Recent developments in international issues and reinforcement of the role of the media in easing the foreign policy cycle led to the formation of a new arena in foreign policy under the name of media diplomacy, which principally deals with the influence of the media on world public opinion and the changes in nations’ foreign policy. The influence of the global TV on resolving political problems and its instrumental role in directing public opinion and exerting pressure on foreign policy agents (as a soft war tool) stimulated the author to offer a new interpretation of soft war at international relations level underlining the significant role of international relations in information exchange and international political propaganda. The author believes the dynamics of the international flow of information help the nations owning the information and communication technologies attract a large audience at national and international levels and convey their political, economic and cultural messages to the international public opinion in line with their political interests making legends and using commercial and political propaganda.

Although the media function as “message”, owing to the significance of their content,they should not be regarded merely as a “tool” but the “power” of media messageshould also be considered. Today, the media are the most important soft war tools.Although the media can create social integrity, they are also capable of broadeningand deepening social rifts. The media simply do not reflect the realities but they alsoimpact on the social constructs of realities in the minds of the public. Therefore, themain task of the media is the media representation and construction of the realityand this is the point where the subject of soft war is raised. In the media world, wedo not deal with “what exists”, so all the media content is a sort of representationof “what really existed” and the most significant media tools of soft war are thepress, news agencies, the Internet and social networks, satellite channels, radio,movies and the cinema, and computer games that are effective in reinforcing social,generational and political rifts.