Abstract
The “maximum pressure” against Iran opened a period of psychological tension in Iranian audiences. It was not about a declared war, but about a permanent “state of war.” The political context from 2017 to 2020 demanded from the Islamic Republic of Iran a media strategy to contain the representation of Iran in global media as a sponsor of terrorism. Thus, Tehran implemented a counter-campaign of “maximum resistance” in the economy, politics, and, of course, in social media, headed by Sazman-e-Honari Rosanai (Owj) which is the most important cultural producer in the Iranian public sphere. So, following an interpretative framework based in the relationship between culture, war, and spectacle,this chapter analyzes some productions of Owj as one of the main producers of Iranian soft-power, taking a few examples in the field of cinema and the visual arts. In this text, I argue that Owj inserted his multimedia content according to the national and international contexts facing by the Iranian government in the face of Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, on the one hand, and in the face of some crises that belonged to the realm of domestic politics, on the other. The chapter begins by presenting a conceptual framework of the relationship between media, militarism, and popular culture considering Robert Stahl’s concept of militainment. Then, the document provides an overview about the history of Owj and its role in the making of militainment media, including television, films, and online content. Finally, the text addresses some concrete examples in three phases of study, from 2017 to 2021, where Iranian militainment industry interrelated topics according to the national and international contexts through imaginaries, symbols, and soft-power mechanisms not only to respond to a wave of Iranophobia coming from abroad, but also to keep the nationalist pillars of the 1979 revolution alive for the new generations.
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Notes
- 1.
Media consumption experienced a dramatic rise given the COVID-19 pandemic turning consumers to online media streaming. By June 2020, 48% of US online adults had subscribed to at least one streaming service, while in Western Europe subscriptions jumped 15.6% that very same year (Global Web Index, 2020).
- 2.
HispanTV is a media project formed by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, and the Venezuelan news channel Tele Sur, where some anti-imperialist narratives function as a performative mechanism of the public opinion that reaffirms the image of the United States as a colonial and military power not only in the Middle East but also in Latin America. See (Garduño, 2020b).
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García, M.G. (2023). The Role of Sazman-e-Honari Rosanai Oax (Owj) During the “Maximum Pressure” Campaign Against Iran. In: Elayah, M.A., Lambert, L.A. (eds) Conflict and Post-Conflict Governance in the Middle East and Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23383-8_2
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