Zinat Motahari

In recent days, Iran witnessed a terrorist attack on a Shiite holy place in the city of Shiraz, in which 14 pilgrims were martyred. This terrorist attack, for which the ISIS terrorist group took responsibility, occurred at a time when internal unrest continued in Iran over the hijab issue. The simultaneity of media attacks, takfiri terrorism, and internal disturbances within a period of one month reflects upon the unique and undeniable role of Iran in regional and international equations; prompting its enemies to put more pressure on Iran.

The evil project of geopolitical disintegration of Iran has been going on for many years and through several measures like international sanctions, pressure by world media, strict monitoring of the United Nations agencies, strengthening of various regional forces such as the Central Asian fuel corridor strategy, support to the reactionary governments of the Middle East, strengthening the opposition groups including the monarchists and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (hypocrites) terrorist group, formation of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, inciting ethnic groups against each other and the central government, soft and hard destruction of Iran-friendly regional groups and governments such as Syria, Yemen, and Hezbollah, and inciting domestic critics in matters related to civil society such as the hijab.

Following the outbreak of the Ukraine War and its effects on the daily lives of Western citizens, this project became the cause of a historical turning point in the region and the world with Iran being its central point as a result of which certain Western and regional powers, with all their hard and soft tools - the aim of which was to prevent Iran from entering the stage of a legitimate and full-fledged nation-state in the form of regional power - openly displayed their actual intention.

For the past two decades, social media and the global Internet network have been used as a platform by Western governments to penetrate the civil societies of Islamic and developing countries with the aim of reducing the process of globalization to the project of Americanization. After two successful experiences of the disintegration of the former Soviet and later in North Africa and the Middle East, these media have, alongside economic and political pressures, been involved in creating internal dissatisfaction about certain sociocultural issues such as the hijab.

The main mechanism used by these media is “induction”, which is continuously advancing and strengthening the discourse of division, especially by relying on some existing economic, generational, bureaucratic, ethnic, religious, party, and political challenges and issues, the solution of which is to be formulated within the framework of the system itself.

By causing rifts among the minorities, exploiting the crises that were mainly caused by imposing economic and political sanctions on Iran in the last two decades, inducing dissatisfaction among the young generation to make inclined towards individualistic beliefs due to imported Western policies of consumerism and one-child lifestyle, and finally by providing support to monarchists abroad in order to create psychological warfare and the idea of a return to the pro-West monarchy system of state throw light on the intention of the West to accomplish the aim of its several decades of multi-faceted and costly conflict with the Islamic Republic by resorting to the strategy of indirect war.

These multidimensional attacks and decades of pressure should be seen as the cause of the exhaustion of all involved forces, including Arab reactionaries, as well as Western unilateralism. Therefore, it would be difficult to deny the fact that the discourse of resistance under the leadership of the Islamic Republic has successfully passed the historical point of pressure and the most severe measures of the strongest global and regional countries have failed to crush it.

The transformation of Tehran’s civil protests into unrest, which does not fall within democratic frameworks, and the violent emergence of scattered demands that lack any social foundations were actually aimed at reacting to the 2010s public uprising in the region.

However, what the West has failed to realize is that it is impossible to repeat this model in a system - with a lifespan of about half a century - the foundation of which had been transferred to the general public of this Islamic society through the intellectual guidance provided by religious scholars and thinkers causing awareness, consciousness, and willpower in the people of an Islamic society for the first time in the history of Islamic states after the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

The discourse of influence, which is evident in the strange performance of media and the propaganda against the Islamic Republic, which is targeted at civil society by making a lot of efforts through the sworn strategy of induction and deception, is due to the lack of awareness about the pivotal role of the people in the discourse of the revolution.

In fact, the duality of these efforts, both media and non-media, that are based on the principles and values promoted by the West should provide the critics with an irrepressible answer with regard to Iran’s foreign policy, because it makes the necessity of being aware of the existing policy of “deception” in the intentions and actions of the West more obvious.

Untruthful propagation of such values such as “human rights”, “democracy”, “freedom”, “of the people, for the people”, “independence”, “development”, “women’s rights”, “children’s rights”, etc. within the framework of the process of globalization is merely a trick used by the West. A glance at the real performance of the West with regard to these values and its objective of maintaining its hegemony by creating terrorist groups, causing ethnic-religious provocations, and inducing internal dissatisfaction to curb an Islamic power and weaken the resistance front, throws light on its policy of “deception instead of force” in international relations in the modern world.

Undoubtedly Iran will pass through this historical turning point successfully and by welcoming constructive criticism and suggestions in various fields, especially bureaucracy and economy, the civil society of the Islamic Republic will demonstrate the satisfaction of its citizens as the final answer to futile subversive efforts.