Iran Opens New Front in Its War Against the U.S. — But Not the Way You Think

The Islamic Republic of Iran is at war with the United States, and has been for a long time. Back in Nov. 2013, as negotiations continued toward what ultimately became Obama’s Iran nuke deal, Iranian political analyst Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini said: “We are engaged in a fierce war with the Americans on all levels.” That war continues to this day, and the mullahs who rule the Islamic Republic have just opened a new front. 

IranWire reported Friday that “the Islamic Republic has launched what it calls a ‘hybrid warfare headquarters,’” and that this is a major operation, as the staff consists of over 40,000 Islamic seminary students. Clearly the mullahs consider this to be an extremely important initiative. The Islamic Republic cannot take its war against the United States to U.S. territory in terms of military action, and so they’re opting for training “soft war officers” whose mission is countering “Western psychological operations” with some of their own. The new initiative is called Balagh-e-Mobin, or Clear Conveyance of the Message.

Inside the Islamic Republic, the Balagh-e-Mobin effort is focused on countering what Iranian leaders see as the Western influence that has turned the nation’s young people against the Islamic Republic, and led to the nationwide protests in 2022 that began with the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been taken into custody for the crime of not wearing her hijab properly. Women all over the country began taking off their hijabs and venturing out in public, and the mullahs saw it all as a Western psyop. Hossein Rafiee, leader of the new “hybrid war,” declared: “Non-hijab is part of the security and intelligence plans of foreign services to weaken the Islamic Republic.”

Now,  the Islamic Republic is determined to take that battle back to the West. In a certain sense, this is already being done. Many, if not most, of the college and university students who agitated for Hamas on their campuses over the last couple of years are more sympathetic to the Islamic Republic of Iran than to the United States, and now the Islamic Republic is planning to begin efforts to build on that sympathy.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, explained in a speech on Dec. 11 that the war against the U.S. and Israel was no longer being fought on any battlefield, but in “the minds and public perception of the people.” He told his followers: “In confronting the enemy, do not be satisfied with defending what he creates doubts about. The enemy has many weaknesses - target those weaknesses, attack them.” And so the new warriors will seek out “media and cognitive confrontation with enemies through systematic narrative control.” 

Mohammad Javad Fazel Lankarani, head of the Jurisprudential Center of the Pure Imams, said that Balagh-e-Mobin was a “checkmate move” that was a cornerstone of an “Islamic civilization-building” plan. It would, he said, involve “presenting religion completely to society at all levels - from belief and ethics to politics and social life.” This would involve not only training preachers to spread Islam, but also raising up “soft war officers” who would not only “function as a defensive network against Western ideas,” but also conduct “offensive information operations.”

Related: Sen. Tuberville Says ‘Islamists’ Are ‘Here to Conquer,’ and Great Pearl-Clutching Ensues

Hossein Rafiee noted that to accomplish this mission, Islamic seminaries in Iran would have to “take a war formation.” He explained: “Although the appearance of conflicts may be hardware-based, the main war is a soft war and media war, and the enemy pursues its goals through this path. Military attack in this framework is only one of the tools for achieving soft war objectives.”

Ayatollah Abbas Kaabi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, which chooses who will be Iran’s supreme leader, observes that the media is “one of the main battlefields for confronting Israel,” and calls upon these keyboard warriors to “isolate Zionists.” This “media jihad,” said Kaabi, must involve “coordination between domestic and foreign media to explain the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy.” 

Plenty of foreign media in the U.S. and Europe will be only too happy to oblige. Leftism has already primed them to despise the land of their birth and love those who wish to destroy that land. The Islamic Republic’s new-style warriors will find numerous friends and allies in the West.