Psychological warfare is the planned use of propaganda through overt means such as radio, television, and the press, as well as covert means such as rumor. It seeks to distort beliefs, undermine morale, discredit motivations, and diminish the authority of the opposing side.

Psychological warfare is a continuous operational activity relying on propaganda and pursued with concealed objectives in both peacetime and wartime. It works on the latent emotions of people and serves as a prelude to military operations.⁠[1] Instilling grief, despair, and hopelessness, and spreading fear and terror are among the objectives of psychological operations.⁠[2] The full range of activities carried out to achieve the goals of psychological warfare is known as psychological operations.⁠[3] Counter-psychological warfare operations, in turn, consist of activities undertaken for preventive defense, active defense during an attack, and remedial defense against enemy psychological operations.⁠[4] Psychological warfare employs various methods: rumor, distortion of reality, exaggeration, sowing division, and deception.⁠[5]

The term “ psychological warfare” was first introduced by J. F. C. Fuller, a British military analyst, in 1920. The practice itself is as old as human society and, before Fuller’ s coinage, was referred to by various names such as “ political warfare” in Britain, “ intellectual warfare” in Germany, and “ propaganda warfare” in Russia.⁠[6]

Psychological warfare draws on a wide range of tools and methods, including newspapers, radio, television, cinema, and leaflets. In World War I, Britain and France distributed leaflets among enemy soldiers by balloon and aircraft, leading many soldiers to surrender.⁠[7] Back in World War II, some of tactics used were stirring discord within society, disseminating carefully directed news, and seizing on enemy mistakes to amplify them into major offenses.⁠[8] After the Allies’ concentrated heavy bombing of Germany, Paul Joseph Goebbels dropped images of destroyed cities over England while simultaneously issuing threats of attack. This caused a flood of refugees to abandon the effort and ultimately disrupted the movement of Allied troops and military vehicles — an operation that became known as the “ Goebbels Plan”.⁠[9]

In modern warfare, psychological warfare employs psychological methods. For instance, during the American war in Vietnam, when an entire village was destroyed, the American public remained largely indifferent.⁠[10]

The Holy Quran also refers to the psychological warfare methods employed by the enemies of Islam against Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), including raising a clamor, using stories and myths, bribery, sowing division, spreading rumors, claiming the Prophet (pbuh) was an angel, and making baseless accusations.⁠[11]

In psychological warfare — and what is today called soft war — the enemy targets the moral and spiritual foundations of a society in order to destroy them. When the enemy cannot make progress on the battlefield, it turns to psychological warfare to demoralize and hollow out the spirit of a nation.⁠[12]

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq resorted to psychological warfare and baseless propaganda, such as claims that the Shah’ s fall and Imam Khomeini (ra) coming to power were orchestrated by America; that Iran was seeking revenge for the first Battle of Qadisiyyah; that Iran followed a Zoroastrian, anti-Islamic religion; that Iran had always been the initiator of the War of the Cities; that Imam Khomeini (ra) had issued a fatwa ordering Iranians to kill prisoners; and that Iranians dismembered prisoners of war. These claims were used to encourage the Iraqi people and military forces to engage in the war.⁠[13]

On September 27, 1980, Radio Jeddah reported that an Iranian naval vessel and an Iranian minesweeper had been sunk near Ras al-Khaimah by the Iraqi navy; a false report and a clear example of psychological warfare directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy and the Iranian people.⁠[14]

The use of terms and expressions such as instability, death, torture, darkness, blood, human rights violations, and similar language depicted an image of destruction before readers and listeners, instilling grief, sorrow, and depression.⁠[15] One example is a report published by the London Times on January 7, 1986. It claimed that the Iranian army, despite being encouraged to seek martyrdom in the path of God, had been unable to penetrate Iraqi fortifications; that Iraqi air strikes on Kharg Island’ s main oil terminal had significantly cut Iran’ s oil exports; and that oversupply in global oil markets and the resulting low prices had further reduced Iran’ s hard currency oil revenues.⁠[16]

Broad propaganda about widespread war-weariness and exhaustion within Iran, claims of declining public support for the Islamic Republic, reports on Iraq’ s military superiority and superpower backing, Iran’ s international isolation, and anti-war demonstrations across Iran were further examples of the psychological warfare waged by Iraq’ s allies. This propaganda campaign was launched in parallel with the bombing of Iranian residential areas, aimed at breaking the morale of the Iranian people.⁠[17]

In 1985, the War Propaganda Headquarters formed a Psychological Operations Committee. The committee initially began collecting and compiling texts and documents related to psychological warfare, then initiated activities to design and implement programs for psychological warfare, counter-psychological warfare, psychological operations, and counter-psychological operations.⁠[18] In the final years of the war, dedicated psychological warfare units were established within military formations, one of which was the psychological warfare unit under the Intelligence Directorate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Ground Forces, managed by Abdul-Ali Tavakkoli (Morteza Bashiri) in 1987.⁠[19]

As part of Iraq’ s ongoing psychological warfare campaign against Iran, Tariq Aziz, a member of Iraq’ s Revolutionary Command Council, claimed that Iraq had no desire to fight Iran and had never planned to do so. He further asserted that the Iranian government, since coming to power, had not only threatened Iraq and neighboring Arab states but had also refused to negotiate border demarcation with Iraq and continued its expansionist policies against the Arab people while interfering in Iraq’ s internal affairs.⁠[20]

During the captivity of Iranian prisoners of war in Iraq, the Iraqis used psychological warfare tools, including instilling fear and terror, humiliation and mockery, slander and false accusations, and isolating active camp members, in an effort to undermine the morale of the prisoners.⁠[21]

The Iraqi government engaged in distorting reality from the very beginning of the Iran-Iraq War. On this matter, after Resolution 598 had been accepted and both Iraq and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, UN Secretary-General Javier Pé rez de Cué llar stated that, based on the content of the Iraqi press regarding the war, it was clear that the Baathist regime had deeply distorted the facts, misrepresented reality, and forgotten that it had imposed the war on Iran and started it.⁠[22]

Today, psychological warfare forms part of the political, military, economic, and social activities of colonial powers, operating through intelligence organizations at both national and international levels in a variety of capacities. The CIA, for example, uses psychological methods to shape public opinion in the United States and around the world.⁠[23] Satellites serve as one of the most fundamental tools of psychological warfare and play a critical role in this arena.⁠[24] In this context, psychological warfare is defined as one of the four core elements of power.⁠[25]

America’ s psychological warfare against Iraq in 2002 is considered the first war in which psychological operations were used to their maximum extent. Among the methods employed were the use of electronic weapons, sending messages to Iraqi military commanders urging them not to support Saddam Hussein, and threatening personnel responsible for Iraq’ s air defense systems by distributing eight million leaflets.⁠[26]