فصلنامه مطالعات عملیات روانی
پیاپی 42 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

This research work is aimed investigating soft war confrontation strategies with an emphasis on infiltration in the Holy Quran. Soft war is a measure which leads to transformation in the cultural identity and patterns of behavior accepted by a political system. In other words, soft war refers to any soft and psychological action and propaganda campaign directed at a target community and afflicts it with inaction and failure without making use of coercion. Today, making use of soft war, psychological operations and infiltration is the only hope of the internal and external enemies. Hence, addressing this issue, particularly from the perspective of the Holy Quran, will be effective and useful. The research method utilized here is descriptive-analytic and the findings are as follows: the enemy attempts to infiltrate into his target community using different ways and the infiltration techniques are: intimidating the leaders about the future of the country, disrupting leaders’ decision-making process, praising officials’ wrong behavior, making rumors, making authorities oblivious to the truth of the Divine traditions (relief and victory of God), starting a friendship, creating disunity and promoting licentiousness. On the other hand, infiltration occurs in security, economic, political, intellectual and cultural fields and is directed at the target community by making use of various techniques to change its beliefs, ideals, outlooks and lifestyle.

A review of the world revolutions of modern times suggests a gradual shift away from their initial ideals and goals. The experiences related to these revolutions indicate that with the introduction of intellectual, ideological and cultural patterns and with the presence of agents from the rival and hostile countries organized in artistic, cultural, economic, academic, political, etc. groups, a network of domestic supporters was gradually created, who were fascinated or intimidated by aliens in different ways. On the other hand, the infiltration strategy has always reduced the hegemonic system’s spending and has provided an apparently rational image of it. In this strategy, dialogue and interaction technique is publicized instead of conflict and clash, but the military option is never taken off the diplomacy table. Following a two-sided outlook, this article, first, reviews the infiltration literature in Western resources. Then, it evaluates the religious approach to the infiltration issue. Benefiting from the teachings of the Quran and the guidelines of the Supreme Leader, the article mainly examines the objectives and attempts of the hegemonic system to infiltrate into the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as its confrontation strategies.

The present article attempts to prove the hypothesis that English language and educational resources used to teach it are utilized as a tool to promote the culture of the West and infiltrate into the cultures of world nations. To this end, the relevant literature was reviewed and the results obtained from the analysis of the content of more than forty English language teaching books were presented. The obtained results suggest that, based on the pre-planned arrangements, English language teaching resources seek to advocate anti-cultural and anti-value teachings such as promotion of licentiousness, denigration of religion, introduction of unconventional socialization manners between men and women, promotion of Western eating styles and so on. Based on the available evidence, this trend is followed with the intention of infiltrating into the culture of the target nations, transforming their cultures and eventually expanding the cultural dominance of the West, particularly America. In the end, it is pointed out that to deal with this influx, it is essential to create the necessary mechanisms and structures to organize foreign language teaching issue, in general, and development of foreign language teaching materials in Iran, in particular.

During the post-JCPOA period, cultural infiltration, accompanied with a dispositional approach based on diplomacy and soft war, is one of the most complex and covert strategies of the hegemonic system to cope with the Islamic Revolution. Infiltration into intellectual-cultural and social layers of the community, deployment of foreign agents in the country, attraction of resource groups such as the elite, artists and athletes and establishment of relations with them, removal of the boundaries between insiders and outsiders and revolutionary and counter-revolutionary people and making them into networks in a media war to conquer public opinion pave the way for transformation from inside and change of the ideals, values, motives and religious and revolutionary teachings. Coping with this approach of the enemy requires the alertness, smartness and special planning of the officials, the elite, resource groups and all strata of the society. Getting the enemy’s strategies, agents and operational scenarios under supervision, disclosing the enemy’s policies and plans and, above all, the effective presence of the faithful and revolutionary forces in the cyberspace as the forefront of confronting the enemy’s cultural infiltration are all necessity.

Establishment of educational-cultural connections and academic exchanges is one of the infiltration strategies in soft war. In this strategy, aligning individuals’ values with the values of the host country is considered the most important axis of academic exchanges. Cultural convergence that occurs between the individual and the host country can be exploited by the host country in the long run. In the academic exchange mechanism, individuals are trained in such a way that they adopt the same identity as that of the host country, so that they can act as the supporters of the interests of the host country after they return to their home countries. This article deals with the issue of academic exchanges as one of the segments of public diplomacy and the most effective and important infiltration method, and its case study focuses on the presentation and the position of academic exchanges with Germany and the most significant threats facing the Islamic Revolution in scientific and cultural fields.

A look at the historical course of America’s practical logic against the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as the current policies of this country suggests the U.S. has the options of controlling the Islamic Republic in domestic and international arenas on the table in the post-JCPOA period. In fact, evidence suggests that the hegemonic system seeks an opportunity to take full advantage of the political and economic environment resulting from JCPOA and reinforce its plots against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the issue represented by the term ‘infiltration’ and as a strategic option of the enemy against the Islamic Republic in the statements of the Supreme Leader. In this article, an attempt will be made to analyze the strategic aspects, objectives, and options designed by the enemy to infiltrate into the Islamic Republic in the post-JCPOA period considering the policy actions and the declared positions of America and the Western think tanks.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been assaulted by the enemies through various strategies and methods during more than three decades of its life. Changing the hard approach into a soft one is considered the hallmark of the confrontation between the West and the Islamic Revolution. Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolution’s enjoyment of the blessing of Velayat-e Faqih as the leadership of the community is considered the main factor for its success against the multidirectional assault of the enemies. A review of the observations of the Supreme Leader during more than two decades following the end of the Imposed War reveals that, from his viewpoint, the elite’s negligence of culture and cultural infiltration is the most significant danger and threat for the Islamic Republic of Iran. This emphasis was intensified on the brink of the nuclear agreement and opened new research horizons for scholars. The concept ‘infiltration’, introduced after such keywords as ‘cultural aggression’, ‘psychological operations’, ‘soft war’, ‘cultural invasion’, etc., has been accompanied by its necessary requirements and documents. Hence, the present study intends to explicate the concept ‘infiltration’ in the post-JCPOA1 conditions benefiting from the ideas of Imam Khamenei.

Infiltration strategy has been considered by various governments since a long time ago, and has been applied in political, military, economic and cultural fields. Expansion of academic centers as well as the emergence of new technologies has extended the possibility of taking advantage of educational and cultural connections for governments’ political purposes. Public diplomacy is among the known phenomena which has been acknowledged especially during the second half of the twentieth century. This new infiltration strategy has found a very privileged position among the security-political strategies of nations due to changes in the global power structure and the shift from hard to soft power resources, on the one hand, and reinforcement of the role of public opinion in international relations, the impact of culture on international relations and influence of the public over domestic and foreign policies, on the other. In this strategy, the public and the elites are the target audience. Infiltration strategy in public policy is partly followed through educational-cultural connections, team-mate selection, training the elite and finally creation and deployment of a network affiliated with the target country. Often, the elite educated in the West are influenced by their progress and superior technology and become the voice of an alien culture after returning to their country. Given the increasing importance of this issue, the present article seeks to explore the enemies’ infiltration process through educational-cultural connections within the context of public diplomacy methods relying on varied documents.