Identification and Prioritization of Strategic-level Psychological Operations Tactics in Recent Regional Conflicts (2003-2017)

West Asia is one of the most important regions on the globe. The reasons for its importance include the abundant resources of energy, being the east-west connecting bridge, cradling major religions in the world and its ethnic diversity. The illegitimate presence of powers in the region has caused insecurity and the recent developments have made the political and military situation in the region more complicated than ever and have contributed to various conflicts in the region. Today, psychological operations have gained a lot of attention and are conducted in the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The identification of psyops in the regional conflicts is of great importance since it can promote decision-making to predict similar instances. Therefore, the main aim of this research is the identification and prioritization of the strategic-level psyops applied by actors in regional conflicts (2003 – 2017). In this research which is done in a descriptive method and mixed-method approach (qualitative to quantitative), the literature was obtained from library sources. Then, through interviews with the scholars, the most important regional conflicts from 2003 to 2017 and the PSYOP tactics applied in them were identified. The identified tactics and criteria were tested and confirmed through a questionnaire. Finally, the tactics were prioritized by use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results show that five main tactics have been majorly used in the regional conflicts which are: exaggeration, forging, deceit, message massage, and intimidation among which, exaggeration turned out to be the most important gaining a composite weight of 0.38.