Paranoia about the West’s “soft warfare” and cultural aggression has been an increasing theme during the administration of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As early as 2007, the paramilitary Basij, an organization with which Ahmadinejad closely identifies, declared that “Basiji thought protects society against the ‘cultural NATO.’” (1) The next year, against the backdrop of the Danish cartoon controversy, Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance stressed the importance of the Iranian media and Muslim unity in a common struggle against the “onslaught of the cultural NATO.” (2) A member of the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body charged with choosing the next Supreme Leader, darkly warned, “Today, the enemy has come to the scene with all its being, and has targeted our youth through Zionist Christianity, cultural NATO and propagation of false Sufism,” (3) a charge picked up by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ weekly. (4)

The Iranian idea of culture as warfare has its parallels among some Sunni Muslims in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1928, 21-year-old Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna founded the organization on the basis that no aspect of life should fall outside Islam’s bounds. For Banna, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad’s life constituted the only foundation on which to base behavior, family conduct, and community organization. Fast forward to the 1970s: against the backdrop of the oil boom and concurrent influx of luxury goods into the newly affluent Saudi society, Saudi theologians started promoting the idea that Western goods—televisions, music cassettes, Cadillacs, and cosmetics—represented an assault against Islam as menacing as any military threat. Men like Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood adherent who would take a young Usama Bin Laden under his wing, described a deliberate Western “cultural attack” that aimed to undermine the Muslim faith in order to ready Muslim society for conversion to Christianity.

It is one thing to believe that Western culture is a strategy deliberately designed to undermine the Islamic Revolution. Most Iranians might disagree, and regime ideologues might be in the minority. The danger comes when Iranians who believe Western culture to be a manifestation of Western military strategy start to act on their paranoid beliefs. In the excerpted article, Khuzistan Education Council Member Fereshteh Hashmatian suggests that Iranians living along the periphery of their country are facing greater external influence than those living in the interior. Her concerns regarding cultural penetration of the southwestern Iranian province bordering Iraq suggest that southern Iraq is freer of Iranian political and cultural influence than some Western officials would suggest. Regardless, Hashmatian’s declarations against the broader context of statements regarding a “Cultural NATO” or the West’s “soft warfare” suggest a renewed Cultural Revolution is in the works

Of greater concern to U.S. military officials should be the Iranian military’s response to such paranoid beliefs. On December 1, 2012, Iran’s General Staff announced the creation of a Soft Warfare Barracks to counter Western “soft warfare.” “The enemy is completely serious in its animosity and therefore, we should create the same atmosphere to confront the enemy,” Deputy Chief of Staff for Cultural Affairs and Defense Publicity Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said. (5) During World War II America’s enemies broadcast propaganda to American forces, and during the Cold War both the United States and Soviet Union sponsored broadcasts and subsidized publications. The Iranian government already subsidizes media aimed at the Western market—the English language Press TV, for example. The question for policymakers and analysts to consider is whether the Iranian regime will limit its “counteroffensive” against perceived Western soft warfare to propaganda or whether it will, like some factions within the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical offshoots, act far more violently to promoters and manifestations of Western culture.

(1) “Rais Sazman-e Basij-e Daneshjo-ye: Tafkir Basiji, Jama’eh ra dar barabar ‘Nato-e Faranghi’ Masun Misazad,” [“Head of the Student Basij: Basiji Thought, Opposes Free Will, ‘Cultural NATO’ in Society,” Qods [Tehran]], November 29, 2007.

(2) Islamic Republic News Agency, March 2, 2008.

(3) “Sihyonism-e Mesihi Javanan ra Hadef Qarar Dadeh Ast,” [“Christian Zionism Has Targeted the Youth,”] Fars News Agency, June 16, 2008.

(4) “Arafanha-ye Varedat-e ba Eda’aha-ye Malakuti,” [“The Imported Mystical Claims of My Kingdom,”], Sobh-e Sadegh, June 9, 2008.

(5) “General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Sets Up Soft War Barracks,” Fars News Agency, December 1, 2012.