Soft Power: the US Cultural Tool in the Middle East and Soft War with the Islamic Republic of Iran

This paper aims to examine the US soft power in the Middle East and analyze the US soft confrontation with Iran through the theoretical framework proposed by Josef Nye. Global and regional powers have always tried to control the management of the global and regional developments in order to sustain and increase their own power. As a geopolitical and geostrategic region, the Middle East has a special significance in the global equations to the extent that this region’s developments have attracted the attention of major powers, including the US, as a hegemon on the global system, and Iran, as a regional, anti-hegemony power. Using its soft power in the Middle East, the US tries to confront with Iran at a regional leveland weaken its power. Based on this introduction, the current paper tries to examine soft power as a cultural tool for the US in this region and how this country uses this tool to confront with the Islamic Republic of Iran.