Protests throughout Iran show that some of the biggest threats to the Iranian regime are its own policies. The Trump administration has drawn attention to these abuses through powerful sanctions. However, the United States has several other tools to exploit Iran's mistakes without engaging in conventional warfare. A political warfare strategy could fill this gap through additional diplomatic, economic, information, cyber and military capabilities to pressure the regime where it is vulnerable.

The architect of America's Cold War-era containment strategy, George Kennan, described political warfare as "the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives." This became a crucial element of the U.S. grand strategy, providing options short of war to undermine the Soviet Union and compel changes in its behavior.

Since then, however, many aspects of political warfare have fallen out of use by the United States. In sharp contrast, Iran is pursuing a sophisticated political warfare campaign central to its efforts to expand its influence across the Middle East at the direct expense of the United States and U.S. allies.


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