Introduction: Compared with previous episodes of protest, Iran’s political protests in Dey 1404 (December 2025–January 2026) were accompanied by higher levels of physical violence, the destruction of public property, and armed confrontations.Providing a comprehensive explanation of these developments, therefore, requires an examination of their transnational dimensions in addition to their endogenous causes.The primary objective of this study is to analyze and explain the policies of external actors in escalating violence during the 1404protests from the perspective of political psychology.The central problem addressed by this research is to move beyond one-dimensional narratives—whether the absolute denial of any external role or the reduction of all developments to foreign orchestration—and to explain how external policies at different levels have created the psychological and social conditions necessary for transforming civic grievances into violent behavior. Accordingly, the main research question is as follows:How can the policies of external actors in escalating violence during Iran’s political protests in 1404 be explained from the perspective of political psychology?



Methods: This study employs a descriptive–analytical research design and a qualitative approach.Data and information were collected through library-based sources, official documents, scholarly articles, and content analysis of online platforms and digital media The theoretical framework integrates Johan Galtung’s theory of structural violence, Barry Buzan’s securitization framework, Erving Goffman’s framing theory, and key concepts from political psychology, including Coleman’s concept of dehumanization, the normalization of violence, and digital radicalization. This integrated framework is used to analyze the mechanisms through which external policies exert influence at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The selection of this theoretical framework enables the study to provide a coherent explanation of the relationship between macro-level power structures, the production of meaning in media environments, and individual agency in digital spaces.



Results and discussion: The findings of this study indicate that foreign intervention is not merely a material or hard-power process; rather, it has been implemented through a form of “multilevel psychological engineering.” At the macro level, economic pressure and securitization policies—such as comprehensive sanctions—have functioned as instruments of structural violence. By undermining livelihoods and generating inflation and poverty, these policies have intensified feelings of “desperation” and “hopelessness” within society. This, in turn, has lowered the threshold of psychological tolerance and increased the potential for protests to escalate into violence. At the meso level, media policies and narrative construction, operating through binary frames of good and evil as well as the dehumanization of the parties involved, have eroded the taboo surrounding violence in the minds of social actors. On this basis, actors have justified their own violence and come to regard it as a heroic course of action. At the micro level, communication and algorithmic policies within digital environments have facilitated the rapid radicalization of users and the normalization of violent behavior by providing practical instruction in violence and fostering the phenomenon of deindividuation.

Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that, through a hybrid-warfare strategy, the policies of external actors have intensified violence during the 1404 protests by generating synergies among structural, discursive, and digital levels. By undermining social capital and psychological security, these policies have sought to deepen identity-based divisions and intensify social polarization, with the objective of generating a power vacuum and sustaining conditions of disorder.Accordingly, addressing this phenomenon requires an understanding of the psychological dimensions of such policies and the adoption of a multilayered approach encompassing the improvement of economic conditions, the restoration of public trust, the strengthening of psychological resilience, and the enhancement of media literacy across society.Effective engagement with this pattern cannot, therefore, be achieved through deterrent policies alone. It requires an integrated strategy operating simultaneously across the economic, media, and cultural domains.