The Process of Theme Development in Psychological Operations

Targeting the thought or insight, intellect and ultimately the willpower of their addressees and their behavior, psychological operations have become one of the most dangerous tools. In fact, the strategies and tactics of psychological operations help their users achieve their desired outcome behind battle fronts of their opponents and bring the battle to an end with the lowest property and life costs. Of course, the realization of this result depends on how optimally psychological operations are designed by the specialists and experts. What they vitally need is to know how to select a theme and develop it into a practical idea. If a suitable course is not followed for identification of appropriatethemes, the identification procedure becomes fruitless and making any plans and implementing them become impossible. Hence, consideration of the experiences of the past wars, the imposed war, the recent wars, regional and trans-regional threats, on the one hand, and lack of any theme development process for psychological operations and lack of any suitable model to be used in the armed forces, on the other hand, obviously show the importance of addressing theme development process. This paper tackles the process of theme development in psychological operations.