psychological operations

Cognitive warfare is an emerging and complex domain within modern hybrid warfare that targets human perception and cognition through digital technologies, social media, and psychological operations. In recent years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been increasingly subjected to such warfare, particularly during the 2022 unrest, when adversaries used targeted content, information saturation, and the illusion of majority to disrupt public cognitive coherence. This study seeks to answer the question: What are the effective strategies for enhancing cognitive resilience against cognitive warfare targeting Iran? The research employs a descriptive-analytical method using library resources, including domestic and international literature. The theoretical framework is based on a combination of cognitive-behavioral and indigenous socio-cultural approaches. Core components of cognitive resilience—such as media literacy, critical thinking, cognitive self-efficacy, mental flexibility, and stress management—form the basis of analysis. The findings reveal key challenges including insufficient media literacy education, lack of indigenous digital platforms, and weak institutionalization of narrative-based resistance (Jihad of Clarification). Accordingly, the study proposes strategic interventions such as enhancing cognitive education, promoting media sovereignty, institutionalizing proactive communication strategies, and establishing psychological support systems. If effectively implemented, these solutions could significantly strengthen Iran’s cognitive resilience against ongoing hybrid and cognitive threats.

The expansion of cyberspace has led to the exploitation of psychological operations by activists of the methodological movement. This operation is designed as a complex process to attract the attention of the public. The present study seeks to achieve cognitive strategies of psychological operations and uses the qualitative content analysis method. The statistical population under study is cyberspace, including messaging networks, which, by collecting relevant statements and comparing the collected data, have classified the cognitive strategies of the methodological front into six tactics. The findings related to the search for descriptive and explanatory sentences related to the research were examined and analyzed according to the theory of transcendental security. The research findings indicate that psychological operations in the field of cognitive strategy include 6 tactics: deception (4 techniques), imagery (3 techniques), induction (4 techniques), perceptual distortion (4 techniques), delay and attention management (3 techniques), and reflection control (2 techniques). The results obtained in this study have the potential to raise awareness, strengthen defense capabilities, aid decision-making, and pave the way for preventive measures.

In the second phase of the Islamic Revolution, the nature, diversity, complexity, sources, and drivers of threats have undergone significant changes. Israeli lobbies in the United States, particularly AIPAC, have prioritized targeting various economic, security, political, social, cultural, and technological domains, aiming to alter behavioral patterns and transform the nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran through techniques of hybrid operations, narrative warfare, and cognitive warfare. Hybrid threats fall under the umbrella of national security threats, aiming to challenge the survival and stability of the system. Hybrid warfare resembles a multi-variable equation that must be addressed at various governance levels. This study explores the influential elements of hybrid warfare, as well as AIPAC's narrative and hybrid methods against the Islamic Republic of Iran, aiming to persuade and manipulate U.S. Congress members and White House officials to impose multi-layered threats against Iran. Using a descriptive-explanatory research method, the findings reveal that AIPAC utilizes fabricated news and narratives to obstruct Iran’s rapprochement with neighboring countries, its reconciliation with the European Union, and its membership in international forums. Additionally, through establishing think tanks, employing senior managers of prominent American research institutions, and supporting aligned researchers as witnesses in Congressional hearings, the lobby leverages expert networks to maximize pressure on Iran. Consequently, systematic and preemptive management of hybrid aggression by lobbies opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly Israeli lobbies such as AIPAC, requires the development of indigenous models and transformations in tools and methods of threat management.

The most important duty of theological science is to protect the religious foundations of the society. This duty is sometimes done by arguing the truth of religion, sometimes by answering doubts and, if necessary, by explaining how doubts are created and the method of doubters in the transformation of religion. The psychological operation of subversives is a mysterious and calculating movement, along with detailed planning for the use of various methods, tools and facilities, which is done to change and destroy beliefs, and turn Islamic customs and traditions against it. to lead to the destruction of the religious and moral principles governing the society, For this reason, the current research has been conducted with the aim of explaining the main components of the subversives' psychological operations in the transformation of the Islamic system and the soft power to deal with it from the perspective of the Supreme Leader. The current research is developmental-applied and according to the need, the documentary-analytical method has also been used. The documents of the Supreme Leader's speech as the research community and other sources related to the research objectives have been used as research samples. Findings The subversives' psychological operations are carried out with the aim of transforming the Islamic system, and exploiting soft war is their subversive strategy. Weakening and distorting religious beliefs and its foundations is the priority of subversives for the transformation of the system.The Islamic society is able to make their efforts fruitless by strengthening soft power, offensive or defensive.

The design of the present study was a qualitative meta-combination and systematic review. The statistical population of the study consisted of all articles performed in the field of psychological operations with a total of 124 articles in Iran and abroad, of which 40 articles with criteria related to the purpose of the present study were selected as the research sample. The research tools consisted of reviewing library documents and reviewing Persian articles in the field of keyword psychological operations, and the method of data analysis was content review and coding. The results showed that the characteristics of war costs, change in the structure of war and change in attitudes toward war are the basic and causal factors of psychological operations, and the characteristics of emerging technologies, modern warfare structure, cognitive and societal characteristics of underlying factors, accessibility indicators To the new knowledge, the conditions and position of psychological operations and coordination and consensus in psychological operations, facilitators and cognitive, emotion-based, behavior-oriented tactics formed the characteristics of psychological operations strategies in this study. Ultimately, operations for the community itself, the enemy community, and the neutral community group include the consequences of psychological operations. The final results of the research show that it provides an integrated model of psychological operations that can help to understand the scope of psychological operations. Keyword: Psychological Operations, Cognitive Warfare, Meta-Combined Model, Systematic Review

Psychological operations are one of the practical strategies used in soft security, which has become a powerful tool in the hands of governments and groups to influence their target area. In today's world, the media has become the main platform for psychological operations to apply policies and pressures against public opinion and politicians by competing governments. The assassination of Shahid Fakhrizadeh, during a terrorist operation, was widely reflected in the media and from the very first moments, it was at the top of the media news. Undoubtedly, the media of the Islamic Republic of Iran have also reacted after this assassination and it goes without saying that in the circumstances, these media have tried to distort and divert the public's mind from the true dimensions of the incident by using psychological operation techniques. The aim of the upcoming research is to analyze the media coverage of the assassination of Shahid Fakhrizadeh in the Iran International News Agency from the perspective of psychological operations, and with the method of qualitative content analysis, it seeks to answer these questions: How was the assassination of Shahid Fakhrizadeh reflected in the Iran International Network? And what psychological operation techniques did the Iran International network use in reflecting the news of the assassination of Shahid Fakhrizadeh? For this purpose, all the news of this network broadcasted between 2020/27/11 to 2020/05/12 have been analyzed. After coding and categorizing, it was concluded that this network has used 27 methods of psychological operations with the goals of influencing the perceptions of the Iranian people, diverting their minds, influencing the public opinion of the world, reducing the influence of Iran in the world and finally isolating Iran.

The expansion of the country's defense field, which includes the entire space of the country and beyond, includes: air security, space defense in all dimensions, target discovery, identification, tracking the enemy until determining its mission, interception with all tools, especially the air base system, and combat and Destruction makes the collection of equipment for detection, collection, confrontation, both active and inactive, cyber operations, electronic warfare, etc., ground base, sea base, and air base to be assembled in a basic structure, and with this structure, all efforts are targeted towards the goals. They should be guided that basically, the goals are of different types and variety, and in addition to speed and acceleration and having freedom of action in space, land and sea, they also have their own tricks and deception in cyberspace, social networks and psychological operations. Comprehensive, complete, unified and unified network in a coherent structure is one of the characteristics of this network so that all components of this network are able to understand each other's language and implement the set of measures to deal with the threat well. Its obvious characteristic is the collection of information and news, its processing and coordination, the matching and integration of information, as well as the dissemination of this news and information to all the necessary soft power command and control centers according to the amount of permitted access of the elements to the said information .

Given the sensitive internal situation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the importance of this important regional actor, the present article tries to address the impact of Iran’s national media and foreign Persian-language media on the events of October-November 2019. The purpose of this article is to first examine the soft war and psychological operations and its broad dimensions and then, the analysis of the content of Persian-language media about the first four days of protest against the increase in gasoline prices in Iran in October 2019 in an analytical manner, and at the same time, examining the possible shortcomings on the part of the authorities and the poor performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, which has enabled certain groups to take advantage of this event as much as they can. Accordingly, the main question is “How did the Persian-language foreign audio-visual media cover the October-November 2019 crisis?” In other words, how did the type of topics raised, the direction, the range of questions of the presenters, the invited experts, the timely use of male and female presenters and the experts with specific clothing, the news sources, the images, the citations and the predictions, the confidence building and measuring the balance and importance of the headlines came about? At the same time, the performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and the actors in the field of internal decision-making has been criticized in this study.

West Asia is one of the most important regions on the globe. The reasons for its importance include the abundant resources of energy, being the east-west connecting bridge, cradling major religions in the world and its ethnic diversity. The illegitimate presence of powers in the region has caused insecurity and the recent developments have made the political and military situation in the region more complicated than ever and have contributed to various conflicts in the region. Today, psychological operations have gained a lot of attention and are conducted in the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The identification of psyops in the regional conflicts is of great importance since it can promote decision-making to predict similar instances. Therefore, the main aim of this research is the identification and prioritization of the strategic-level psyops applied by actors in regional conflicts (2003 – 2017). In this research which is done in a descriptive method and mixed-method approach (qualitative to quantitative), the literature was obtained from library sources. Then, through interviews with the scholars, the most important regional conflicts from 2003 to 2017 and the PSYOP tactics applied in them were identified. The identified tactics and criteria were tested and confirmed through a questionnaire. Finally, the tactics were prioritized by use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results show that five main tactics have been majorly used in the regional conflicts which are: exaggeration, forging, deceit, message massage, and intimidation among which, exaggeration turned out to be the most important gaining a composite weight of 0.38.

Regarding the concept of psychosocial operations, there is no single definition that is generally accepted, and to some extent, there are different perceptions of the term by different individuals, groups and governments. Today, humans have witnessed the unprecedented prevalence of modern and new media and mass media in the world, which has exposed them to the most intense media waves. The media has various functions, but the bulk of their uses were in the hands of the hegemonic systems, as it can be argued that maintaining and extending the authoritarian power of the hegemonic systems depends on the presence and emergence of the media. The media are the bridges, and, also the means of mastering the thoughts, wills and feelings of humanity in the new era. The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of these modern and emerging media on the application of psychological operations. Therefore, using the analytical-descriptive approach and addressing the main question that; what is the impact of modern mass media on the application of psychological operations ?, and also by hypothesizing the threats of new technologies in the areas of cultural, social, educational, political, economic, and security aspects from the perspective of psychological operations, we will consider modern mass media techniques and practices such as social media, positioning, virtual social networks, gadgets communication tools, smart TVs, gaming devices, and etc., in soft war discussions

Soft power is one of the concepts that in recent decades, given the advances that have taken place in the field of communication and information technology in the global arena, attracted much attention in international relations and, given the lower cost and more impact Compared to hard tools, it has become one of the most important tools in foreign policy. The soft power is based on creating the attractiveness and use of intellectual and cultural capacities to move others in line with the desired goals. It is natural that a country with a great deal of political, economic, scientific, cultural and other dimensions can use this tool, and the United States is one of the most important countries, that, in the beginning of 20th century, has paid attention to this tool in its Foreign policy . And soft power and its related concepts have a special place amongst foreign policy-makers and among those who are involved in publishing on foreign policy affairs. The basic question in this paper is, what is the position and role of soft power in US foreign policy and to what extend has affected the success of the country? It was also hypothesized that, the effort to produce and provide soft power with the aim of influencing other countries has an important role in US foreign policy, which facilitates the achievement of national goals and interests and lead to the promotion and effectiveness of its foreign policy in the field of global politics.

The purpose of this study is to identify the US government and its media outreach techniques used to persuade North Korean officials to negotiate and accept the issue of nuclear disarmament. In this regard, the researchers’ efforts were to use the Qualitative Content Analysis method to highlight and analyze the news of the affiliated and pro-US government news media such as Reuters, BBC, and the BBC during the period from May 1396 to June 22, 1397, when the leaders of the two countries met, and provide an appropriate answer to the question of what psychological operations measures have the US authorities used to negotiate with North Korea?
The results suggest that US government officials, with the goal of gaining international credibility for Trump government and showing a good deal from the view point of the new White House officials, have taken advantage of various psychological operations techniques so that through changing the position of the North Korean authorities to negotiate and accept Nuclear disarmament, will restore the lost political image of the United States by withdrawing from international treaties, such as the Paris deal and Barjam (comprehensive plan of action). In this regard, they have used techniques like enlightening, encouragement, inspiring confidence, putting in strait, exaggeration, intimidation, continuity, generalizing, mockery and de-humanization of the opponent.

Psychological operations cover a wide range of psychological actions, infiltration techniques, communication and media tactics, and even group dynamics, and aim at influencing the views, attitudes and behaviors of the audience.
The new wars has shifted from the military to the soft and it is one of the most effective means of warfare are psychological operations that using the contemporary media, do not know any limitation in time and space.
This research aims to explain the role of futures research in managing the psychological operations in the field of future disputes and, in the same vein, seeks to play its role in predicting the threat of psychological operations and also to explain the position of future studies in estimating the areas of the threat.
The study seeks to answer the question that what are the position and function of futures studies in managing PSYOP in the context of future disputes, and What role does it play in prognosticating the threatening psychological warfare issues? To answer these questions, this research has been done descriptively and with library tools and documentation.
The results suggest that the psychological operations in future disputes will depend on several important requirements in their evolutionary direction, including management, in which it will try to provide the managers with more accurate and centralized information. Another is the use of new tools that PSYOP management needs to use in the broader context of future disputes, in which media play a major role. Finally, the use of opportunities in the best way that reduces the impact of the political situation of conflict on psychological operations.

Psychological operations play a complex role with the emergence of new and widespread media and growth of public opinion in government decision making and behavior. A cyberspace is a new space that, in the sense of the term, refers to a set of internal connections of humans through computers and telecommunications regardless of physical geography. Governments’ use of psychosocial operations to deal with Offensive actions and the soft war has a long record in history. Therefore, it is very important to take measures to eliminate or neutralize and reduce the effects of offensive and soft actions of the enemy in this domain. Although these threats cannot be eradicated, there are ways to reduce its harmful effects. The researchers in this study seek to answer: what are the effective defensive measures to reduce the role of cyberspace in psychological operations? Our goal in this research is to “identify defensive measures to deal with enemy’s psychological operations in cyberspace.” The study is conducted in descriptive-analytical and library collection method. Analysis-based data suggest that cyber-defense activities in psychological operations include: getting familiar with cyber-space damages and threats, deep attention to cyberspace infrastructure, localization of equipment, and training of enemy techniques in the field of Psychological operations to the people and ... can be noted.

One of the most effective tools of PSYOP for the United States is "media" in order to achieve its colonial goals in target countries without military confrontation. On the other hand, after the incident of September 11, the United States has focused its attention on "human rights" and the use of the "ethnicity" issue against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The status of religious minorities and the rights of ethnic groups in Iran is one of the main issues of human rights that the United States is chasing in its media in order to disturb not only Iran’s political stability and territorial integrity, but also create and intensify the internal crisis .The present paper along with defining the human rights considers the role of the United States in promoting its goals through the use of psychological operation in ethnic groups to create crisis and even "proclamation of autonomy and separation" and examines the use of this advertising tool in the media about the Baloch race. In this research, it has been attempted to make to explain the US's instrumental use of the human rights against Iran by employing the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Today, one of the most common topics in the governmental domain is forming public opinion. Although it has not been a long time since the word "Public Opinion" devised, this term has been under the ruler's magnifiers since the foundation of human societies. To sum up, it can be said, there are two points of view about the very Managing Public Opinion: The first is considered to give a direction to the people's thought in order to keep the power and the office. In the second point of view directing public opinion is conducted with the goal of cultivating people and leading them to the prosperity. In this assay, the writer is going to answer this question that in Imam Ali's State how was public opinion management conducted and with what goals? So beside spelling out the public figure among the Arabs, before and after the shining of Islam, and pronouncing restrictions on the way of deploying directions on public opinion. In Alavi State with the emphasis on Imam Ali's Letter to Malik-e Ashtar at the time when Malik was elected as the governor of Egypt province, we try to prove that directing public opinion has done with the goal of leading people to the prosperity rather than just exploiting it.