An Investigation into the Role of the US Soft Threat in the Unrests Following the 2009 Presidential Elections (With an Emphasis on its Political Dimensions)

The present article examines the US soft threat in the unrests following the 2009 presidential elections. It attempts to explicate and analyze the US soft threat, which entered the soft war phase in the unrests following the 2009 elections, and introduce its respective functions and elements. Undoubtedly, scrutinizing the role of the US soft threat/war in the post-election developments and identifying its various dimensions, particularly its political aspects, is of great importance. The present research, which is a descriptive-analytic study, begins with this question: To what extent did the US political, soft threat impact the unrests following the 2009 elections? In addition to this main question, some other minor questions were raised: What factors provoked the unrests following the 2009 elections? What kind of relationship is there between these factors and the US political, soft threats? And, what implications have the unrests following the 2009 elections had for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s domestic and foreign policy? The data collected for this study were analyzed using the SPSS software and the single-sample T-test. Our findings suggest that the US political soft threat/war has played the major role in the unrests following the elections.