فصلنامه مطالعات عملیات روانی
پیاپی 31 (زمستان 1390)

As the Islamic Republic of Iran was commencing its fourth decade, it was accused of wide electoral fraud by the counter-revolutionary factions residing abroad and power-seeking individuals inside the country. This anti-security charge created chains of insurgencies and revolts out of the pre-election rallies. Supporting some domestic agents, foreigners triggered a new project titled "soft war" against the Islamic Republic of Iran in these events. The main tools utilized in this war were the news media: news agencies, radio and television, satellite channels and the Internet. Now, the question raised is: “Which one of these tools is the most influential?” The current era is called the information age and the Internet plays a special role in it. The evidence at hand suggests that the Internet is more influential than other media tools in this era. The statistical analysis of our data indicate that in four cases the Internet has had high influence and in one case it has had below-average influence in the soft war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the West felt it was being threatenedby its cultural impacts and made every possible attempt to alter the structure of the Islamic Republic by making it change its behavior. However, the policies and management strategies of the great leader of the revolution, Imam Khomeini (rah.), and the Supreme Leader, Imam Khamenei, as well as the resistance of the Iranians made the attempts of the hegemonic system fail. Accordingly, feeling threatened by the Islamic Republic, the West followed every possible action ranging from hard, semi-hard to soft measures in order to overthrow the Islamic government in Iran. Taking advantage of the international, regional and domestic potentials, the U.S. imposed the heaviest pressures on Iran by carrying out the Delta Project and media battle. The context of elections in Iran and the existence of a favorable background for their activities made the West utilize the Internet to accomplish their goals. The present study attempts to deal with this question: “What is the role of the enemy’s utilization of the Internet in the unrests following the elections in Iran?” The findings of this study suggest that the measures taken in cyberspace, launching and supporting various blogs and websites and taking advantage of the web 2 are all indications of the hegemonic system’s full use of the Internet in the unrests following the presidential elections in Iran and its impact on training their agents, providing information for them, coordinating them, running psychological operations, etc. It can be said that the Internet has been of a special interest for the West due to its multimedia function and wide range of potentials and capabilities which are not confined by the time and space boundaries. This has caused the Islamic Republic of Iran to pay a special attention to the Internet, too and take a serious approach towards it.

Following the communications revolution, scholars in various fields strived to investigate the impact of this phenomenon on their specialized areas. Foreign policy and diplomacy is one of the areas affected by the communications revolution and media activities and media diplomacy has taken shape in light of this development. However, the reciprocal influence of diplomacy agents and media on each other and the quality of their relationship has always been debated. Hence, the present article deals with this issue through the following steps. First, the conceptual geography of media diplomacy in the wide area of foreign policy is examined. Second, the relationship between diplomacy and media is discussed and it is shown that this relationship is not one-sided. In other words, although the diplomatic systems of various countries attempt to take advantage of media to boost the interests of their respective country, media shape the thought context of diplomacy decisionmakers (structure-seeking relationship between diplomacy and media). Finally, some guidelines are offered to help media diplomacy succeed.

Following the Second World War and changes in the paradigms governing the political and security literature, soft threat was widely utilized by the Western countries against certain nations to help fulfill their hegemonic goals. In this regard, Basij acts as an important pillar of the Islamic Republic of Iran and as an institution responsible for establishing and maintaining national power. Since the University Students Basij, due to its academic character, can assume a highly significant role in this area, an attempt has been made here to look into controlling soft threats and to examine the role of the Students Basij ofthe West Azarbaijan Province Universities in this regard. This study is based on the descriptive-survey method and 60 subjects were chosen from among the students and staff of the West Azarbaijan Province Universities. A researchermade questionnaire was utilized for data collection. The content validity of this instrument was confirmed by experts and its validity coefficient was 84.9% on the basis of Cronbach's alpha. The obtained data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistical methods and using SPSS software.

The present article, on the one hand, looks into the nature of the impacts of media on public opinion and, on the other, it aims to examine how some nations utilize this impact in order to exercise power, with its persuasive sense, andfulfill their objectives within the framework of soft war. The variety of contents offered by media and influenced by the culture of the respective nation function as the soft power of that nation and shapes and directs the public opinion ofthe target nation taking advantage of media tools. Soft war is related to public opinion since it influences public opinion by making use of modern tools and technologies in creating desirable images from undesirable phenomena. The current global conditions have involved world nations in a rivalry which requires them not only to have soft power and some representations of hard power, but also to be accepted by the global public opinion and persuade others to respect their causes.

Threats against the Islamic Republic of Iran can be divided in two types: hard and soft threats. Giving priority to either type of threat poses a different kind of security strategy for decision-makers. Following a discussion on the concept of soft war, its standing, applications and examples in international relations and its utilization by major powers including the U.S. against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the present study proves the hypothesis that the strategy of the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran is currently based on nonmilitary measures and soft threat along with military action. By following such measures, the enemy mainly attempts to weaken the Islamic Republic of Iran and increase its military and security costs.

Developments of the current century have put culture and its related elements among the most significant national and international issues and at present a lot of macro-cultural issues have been deeply linked with political subjects. The contemporary world has abandoned the old software-based approach and is currently following an approach which focuses on dominating the minds of the public and manipulating cultural elements. Accordingly, culture has found an important position in the field of security issues and is considered a significant factor in issues related to software aspects of power and soft war, and with regard to cultural NATO and cultural assault – an assault with violent and overthrowing nature though it appears to be soft, less costly and without life and property losses. Hence, understanding this phenomenon can positively contribute to security measures and policy development. One of the issues related to cultural assault is how to cope with it and cultural jihad is considered a necessity and obligation in this regard, particularly in societies where religious and national values are highly respected. Using a descriptive-analytic method, the present article attempts to look into the concepts of cultural assault and cultural NATO and ways of coping with them and, in particular, it introduces cultural jihad as an operational approach and confrontation strategy to be used to cope with the enemy’s cultural assault.