As Trump’s idiosyncratic approach to domestic and international politics unravels the US imperium, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s soft power is increasing proportionately.
Whatever the denouement of the US-Israel war of aggression on the country, Iran’s amplified soft power will be its enduring legacy.
What explains this? What all goes into and informs the matrix of Iran’s evolving soft power? How does it undercut Trump’s United States?
First, a note on ‘soft power’.
Coined by the eminent Harvard professor, late Professor Joseph Nye, soft power means ‘the ability of a country or society to attract on account of its values, ideals, and cultural appeal that are seen as moral and legitimate’.
This definition, a rough one, posits soft power in contradistinction to hard power, the military and coercive powers of states.
Obiter dictum, it needs to be pointed out here that the Trump administration disavowed soft power in favour of a clearly hard power informed, militarized foreign policy. This was made clear in explicit terms in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document.
Pared to its essence, the NSS 2025 postulated an ‘Imperial United States’ carved out through hard power and in terms of ‘spheres of influence’.
The first ‘test case’ of this approach was Venezuela. Spurred by the success of the Venezuelan experience and egged on by meretricious advice from motivated advisers, Trump had Iran in his crosshairs.
Long a sore sticking point for the US and Israel in the Middle East, especially since 1979, the conflict with Iran was managed by various administrations.
While Iran’s foreign and defense policy was defined by a doctrine called ‘strategic patience’, the US-Israel strategy toward Iran was underpinned by ‘hybrid war’, a technique that meshed sanctions, cyberwar, currency manipulations, and the grooming of disaffected Iranians within the country.
US-Israel hopes lay in the premise that sustained hybrid war pressure would bring about ‘regime change’ in Iran. But Trump, being impulsive, crude, and having an inflated self-belief to the point of being at odds with reality, and encouraged by powers that be, waged war against Iran on February 28, 2026, while negotiations were going on between the two sides.
The details since this infamous date are known to everyone. This is exactly where Iran’s soft power kicks in.
Ably resisting the US-Israel war of aggression, Iran validated its ‘strategic patience’ doctrine. The country had used time and its resources very well. It had ably and deftly built its hard power capabilities and integrated these with soft power, which Joseph Nye had called ‘smart power’.
Iran had also built a resilient economy under the shadow of sanctions and crafted even more resilient and flexible governance systems, under the broad rubric of a foreign and defense policy designed to resist and survive.
The beauty of this full spectrum approach lay in its practical application. It worked seamlessly as it was designed to under conditions of great stress.
The coup de grace of this seamless integration is the amplification of Tehran’s soft power.
Hitherto, Iran was misrepresented and demonized by Western media and politicians through their narrative dominance and control of airwaves, print, and mass media. It was denigrated as a ‘humorless theocracy’, a ‘murderous regime that thwarted the freedom and aspirations of its citizens against their will’, a country of ‘oppressed women waiting to be liberated’, and so on.
This vituperative and poisonous narrative was directed at multiple audiences in the West: ‘ordinary Westerners’, feminists, journalists, and a media ecology through which it reached the Western university system.
These audiences were, to borrow a phrase from the 1999 movie The Matrix, ‘blue pilled’ to believe these narratives.
But enter the Feb 28, 2026 war on Iran, and this immoral war of aggression appears to have released a pent-up burst of creative genius and energy.
It has also produced a diplomatic posture and maneuvering that, in judo-like moves, uses the superior force of the enemy against it, aided by an asymmetric war strategy and complemented by mass displays of support for Iran’s government and its stance against the war.
Courtesy of social media, which has ‘democratized’ access to information, emblematized by Iran’s use of LEGO animated themes that cut to the marrow of the issues as they emerge, Iran’s soft power is suddenly ubiquitous and resplendent.
Complemented by a very deft, able, and sophisticated campaign by Iran’s embassies across the world, Tehran’s era of underwhelming cultural misrepresentation is over.
The entire world is suddenly ‘red pilled’, waking up to a reality from the slumber of a simulated one.
The LEGO animated videos, so brilliantly done that they would put Netflix and Hollywood to shame, synchronized with the civilizational, philosophical, poetic, and aesthetic achievements that blend the Iranian with the modern, with a distinct Iranian flavour, and the architectural achievements and splendour of Iran, shatter the deliberately orchestrated and cultivated Western mythical and reductively stereotypical images of Iran.
All of a sudden, resistance to imperialism or neo-imperialism is cool. Iran is hip. The entire world is riveted and transfixed.
People across the world are waiting for the war to be over, just to be able to visit Iran and learn about its history, culture, ethos, and faith-inspired values.
The brilliance of it all perhaps lies in how effortless this seems, another tribute to the particular genius of Iran and its people.
To conclude, there are two key takeaways from all this: one is that soft power matters, and two is that it works best when integrated with hard power. The late Joseph Nye called it ‘smart power’.
Whether Iranian strategists had read Nye or not is moot, but what is relevant is Iran’s able and dexterous use of smart power. Viva Iran!
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