Iran Mobilizes 40,000 Seminary Students in New ‘Cognitive War’ Against the West

iranwire – The Islamic Republic has launched what it calls a “hybrid warfare headquarters,” staffed by more than 40,000 seminary students.

The Balagh-e-Mobin headquarters represents Iran’s latest attempt to engineer public opinion after previous propaganda efforts failed to contain the massive street protests that swept the country in 2022.

The initiative transforms religious students into “soft war officers,” tasked with countering “Western psychological operations” aimed at undermining the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy.

One mission: “reminding Iranians about mandatory hijab rules.”

“Non-hijab is part of the security and intelligence plans of foreign services to weaken the Islamic Republic,” said Hossein Rafiee, who heads the new headquarters.

The program reveals how Iran’s leadership increasingly views the main threat to its survival not as military invasion, but as a war over narrative control – a conflict fought through media, social networks, and public perception rather than missiles and troops.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei outlined this shift in a December 11 speech that framed current tensions in explicitly propagandistic terms.

The 86-year-old cleric told followers that the primary battlefield has moved from geographic borders to “the minds and public perception of the people.”

“In confronting the enemy, do not be satisfied with defending what he creates doubts about,” Khamenei said. “The enemy has many weaknesses – target those weaknesses, attack them.”

The speech came as Iran faces mounting pressure both domestically, amid ongoing women’s rights protests and economic discontent, and internationally, with continued tensions over its nuclear program and regional activities.

According to Tehran’s analysis, Washington’s main objective is to create “fear, despair, and mental confusion” within Iranian society through what officials call “psychological and cognitive war.”

The Balagh-e-Mobin headquarters was officially established on June 21, during the 12-day war, and operates under seminary management.

Its stated mission is media and cognitive confrontation with enemies through systematic narrative control.

The new initiative emerges directly from the collapse of an earlier propaganda effort. In 2021, Khamenei introduced the “Jihad of Explanation,” which he described as a salvational strategy for countering Western influence.

That program failed spectacularly during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, which erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody for allegedly violating hijab rules.

The protests spread to more than 160 cities, drawing millions of people into the streets.

The deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) acknowledged the failure with unusual candor, saying that if the jihad of explanation had succeeded, “Tehran’s streets would not be like this.”

Despite that admission, the Islamic Republic spent massive sums on content production, cyber activities, and propaganda programs. Officials now concede that these efforts were largely ineffective.

Rather than reassessing its approach, Iran has doubled down. The Islamic Republic has added what one analyst describes as “a new layer to its efforts to engineer public opinion,” pursuing a more complex and centralized project with formal institutional backing.

Khamenei first proposed the Balagh-e-Mobin concept in April, positioning it as the seminary system’s most important mission.

He described it as conveying “the message of religion in a clear, transparent, and comprehensive manner.”

However, officials characterize the program as far more expansive than traditional religious outreach.

The project aims to address everything from theological monotheism to lifestyle choices, environmental issues, governance structures, and social relations.

Mohammad Javad Fazel Lankarani, head of the Jurisprudential Center of the Pure Imams, called Balagh-e-Mobin the “checkmate move” of Khamenei’s strategy.

He described it as the backbone of an “Islamic civilization-building” plan.

“Balagh-e-Mobin means presenting religion completely to society at all levels – from belief and ethics to politics and social life,” Lankarani said.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, said the program must demonstrate “the efficiency and effectiveness of religion in managing society.”

Officials describe an ambitious operational structure that employs cutting-edge technology in the service of religious messaging.

Mostafa Hosseini Neyshabouri, head of the International Center for Quran and Propagation, said the religious message must reach “all humans,” including those with no connection to the Islamic world.

His roadmap includes establishing an international propaganda headquarters, training multi-skilled preachers, deploying extensive media and artificial intelligence tools, analyzing field data, and adapting messages to different cultural contexts.

The program aims to train “soft war officers” – religious students and clerics who function as a defensive network against Western ideas while also conducting offensive information operations.

Rafiee, the headquarters chief, who also serves as deputy for cultural affairs of the seminaries, describes the mission in military terms. Seminaries must “take a war formation,” he said.

“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,” Rafiee explained. “Military attack in this framework is only one of the tools for achieving soft war objectives.”

The Balagh-e-Mobin headquarters has established what officials describe as a comprehensive national presence.

The 40,000 active preachers represent a significant mobilization of religious students across Iran’s provinces.

Rafiee said the headquarters must “be with the people and act as a defensive dam preventing the infiltration of doubts.”

He drew explicit parallels to military defense systems.

“Just as missile defense systems are deployed in the military field, in soft war, seminaries, religious preachers, and professors each play the role of a defensive base that both defends positions and acts offensively,” he said.

One of the headquarters’ first initiatives was the creation of an economic working group, which later spawned subgroups focused on economic content production and economic activism.

However, six months after their formation, these groups have yet to publish any economic content.

Ayatollah Abbas Kaabi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, extends the military metaphor to media operations.

He calls the media “one of the main battlefields for confronting Israel” and says Iran’s media front must “isolate Zionists.”

Kaabi emphasizes “media jihad” and coordination between domestic and foreign media to explain the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy.

His strategy includes boycotting critical media, avoiding the publication of news that could weaken the Islamic Republic, maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information, promoting “martyred journalists” as role models, creating multilingual media operations, widely republishing regime “victories,” and maintaining military-style management of social media.

The program’s scope continues to expand. Alireza Arafi, director of the seminary system, described Balagh-e-Mobin as the core of the seminaries’ macro mission.

The program must cover “everything from explaining monotheistic teachings to lifestyle, environment, intellectual governance, and international presence,” Arafi said.

He added that seminaries must closely track developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences.

The Balagh-e-Mobin headquarters represents what observers see as the Islamic Republic’s formal acknowledgment that its primary challenge is not military, but ideological – maintaining control over how Iranians understand their government, their religion, and their place in the world.