بعثة الشعب وإعادة إنتاج الشرعيّة السياسيّة في ظروف الحرب الهجينة: تحليل ‏خطاب المقاومة والفاعليّة الاجتماعيّة في إيران‎ ‎‏(عامَ 14۰4‏‎–‎‏14۰5 هجريًّا شمسيًّا‏)

Recent political and social developments in Iran, particularly in the context of hybrid warfare, cognitive conflicts, and regional security transformations, have raised new questions concerning the relationship between the state, society, political legitimacy, and the national sphere. Much of the classical literature on political participation analyzes social action primarily through electoral participation, elite competition, or organized mobilization. However, Iran's experience demonstrates that at certain historical turning points, segments of society have moved beyond formal mechanisms and entered the public sphere through social, media, cultural, and public activism in defense of national security, social cohesion, and political order. This study aims to explain this phenomenon by introducing the concept of "the People's Mobilization" (Ba'that al-Nās) as a new analytical framework for reexamining the relationship between resistance, the people, and political legitimacy. It seeks to demonstrate how, under conditions of crisis, part of society moves beyond the role of political spectators to become active social agents. The central research question is: How does the discourse of resistance generate social agency and give rise to the phenomenon referred to as the "People's Mobilization," and how does this process contribute to the reconstruction of political legitimacy and the redefinition of state–society relations? The study hypothesizes that under conditions characterized by perceptions of external threats and hybrid crises, the discourse of resistance, through the articulation of key signifiers such as Iran, national security, martyrdom, the people, and republicanism, creates the conditions for a distinctive form of voluntary collective action that may be described as the People's Mobilization. In this context, citizens become not merely the recipients of political decisions or participants in elections, but active contributors to the production of security, social cohesion, and the reconstruction of political legitimacy. The theoretical framework is grounded in discourse theory and the theory of hegemony. It draws upon Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theory of articulation and the central signifier, Michel Foucault's concept of subjectivity and agency, and Jürgen Habermas's theories of legitimacy and the public sphere. To explain the role of the people in the political thought of the Islamic Republic, the study also draws on the ideas of Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, and selected works on Islamic political philosophy and religious democracy. The research employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The analytical process consists of six stages: identifying the central signifier, extracting floating signifiers, analyzing discursive articulation, examining hegemony and social consent, analyzing social agency, and evaluating empirical evidence. The data include public opinion surveys conducted by ISPA and the IRIB Center for Public Opinion Research during 2025–2026, media reports, social campaigns, social media data, and relevant scholarly studies. The findings indicate that "resistance" functions as the central signifier in recent developments in Iran, around which concepts such as Iran, national security, martyrdom, the people, and republicanism have been articulated. This discursive articulation constructs a chain of meanings in which defending national security, supporting Iran, and engaging in voluntary social action become integrated within a shared interpretive framework. The findings further demonstrate that the concept of the People's Mobilization differs from social mobilization, political participation, and social solidarity. Social mobilization is generally organizational and temporary in nature; political participation is largely confined to formal and electoral arenas; and social solidarity primarily refers to cultural cohesion. In contrast, the People's Mobilization describes a condition in which citizens, motivated by a sense of national responsibility, awareness of external threats, voluntary participation, sustained engagement, and effective social action, actively enter the public sphere. An examination of the "Jan-Fadā" ("Life Sacrifice") campaign, collective commemorative rituals, public gatherings, and media activities during 2025–2026 also indicates that this model of social participation possesses identifiable empirical manifestations. The findings further suggest that political legitimacy in contemporary Iran is not reproduced solely through institutional and electoral mechanisms; rather, under crisis conditions, it can also be reinforced through collective action, national solidarity, and social participation. Nevertheless, this legitimacy remains dynamic, relative, and subject to change, with its continuity depending upon factors such as public trust, social capital, economic performance, and effective media persuasion. Public opinion surveys conducted during 2025–2026 likewise reveal that, despite the significance attached to national security, economic conditions and livelihood concerns continue to constitute the foremost priorities of Iranian society.
In conclusion, this study argues that the concept of the People's Mobilization provides an alternative model for understanding social participation under conditions of hybrid warfare and multidimensional crises. Within this framework, the discourse of resistance generates social agency through cultural hegemony and discursive articulation; social agency gives rise to the People's Mobilization; the People's Mobilization produces collective action; and collective action, in turn, contributes to the reconstruction of dynamic political legitimacy and the redefinition of the relationship between the state and society. From this perspective, the People's Mobilization constitutes the critical link connecting the discourse of resistance with political legitimacy in contemporary Iran.