Extended Abstract

Introduction: In the contemporary international system, particularly in the information age, the concept of power has transcended purely material and hard frameworks, with its soft, perceptual, and cognitive dimensions increasingly coming to the forefront of geopolitical competitions. Accordingly, public diplomacy, as one of the main pillars of soft power, has become a strategic tool for influencing the attitudes, beliefs, and mental preferences of domestic and international audiences. Contemporary public diplomacy is no longer limited to information dissemination or political propaganda; rather, it is a cognitive and discursive process through which states, utilizing language, media, imagery, and digital platforms, redefine the identity of "self" and "other."

Within this framework, "cognitive public diplomacy" refers to a systematic effort to manipulate the perception, beliefs, and emotions of audiences through the reproduction of specific discourses and the consolidation of threat-oriented narratives. The relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America is a prominent example of such perceptual and discursive confrontation. Based on this, the main objective of the present study is to analyze how the Islamic Republic of Iran is represented as a "threat" within the framework of the United States' cognitive public diplomacy during the years 2010 to 2025. This research seeks to demonstrate through what linguistic, narrative, and discursive patterns the United States produces and reproduces a threat-oriented image of Iran, and what functions this image serves in legitimizing policies of containment, sanctions, and pressure..

Methods: The present study employs a qualitative approach based on Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method. The theoretical framework integrates theories of "soft power," "representation," and "discursive power," along with concepts related to cognitive warfare and perceptual security. The research data consists of 180 selected official and media texts, including statements and speeches by U.S. officials, as well as content published in media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Farda, CNN, and affiliated digital platforms, spanning the period from 2010 to 2025. The unit of analysis is "meaning clauses," and data analysis was conducted at three levels: linguistic, discursive, and functional. The data coding process was carried out using MAXQDA software, and the reliability of the analysis was confirmed through Cohen's Kappa coefficient.

Results and discussion: The research findings indicate that the United States' public diplomacy, utilizing strategies such as negative framing, moral labeling, and emotional narration, reproduces a stable image of Iran as an irrational, destabilizing actor incompatible with the liberal international order. Within this representation, five main discourses have been identified: nuclear threat and irrational behavior; terrorism and regional destabilization; human rights violations and domestic suppression; incompatibility with the liberal world order; and cyber threat (with a cognitive function). These representations have led to the legitimation of containment and sanction policies at the international level, and to the weakening of symbolic capital and reduction of cognitive resilience within Iran.

Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that the representation of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a "threat" within the framework of the United States' cognitive public diplomacy is not a reflection of an objective reality, but rather the product of a process of meaning engineering and the exercise of discursive soft power. Over the past decade, U.S. public diplomacy has transcended the level of political information dissemination and has been elevated to the level of systematic cognitive operations. This represents a transformation in which narrative and perceptual control have become the primary instruments of power exertion in U.S. foreign policy.

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