The expression “cultural impact assessment” was first used by the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution in his meeting with the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. Cultural impact assessment deals with the mutual effects of a plan and project with the culture and cultural system. In other words, amongst the most important duties of cultural impact assessment are its investigation of the effects an in-progress project has on the society’s value and culture system as well as the effects and interactions that the existent culture and values might have on a plan. The adverse effects of disregarding the cultural impact assessment can be repeatedly seen in a review of Iran’s contemporary history in various plans and projects in cultural, political and social areas. A project or plan might reach a physical completion without cultural impact assessment in which case costs should be made several times larger than those of the project implementation for repairing the cultural and social harms caused by the project. According to the accentuation of soft war and soft overthrowing of Islamic Republic of Iran by the enemies, these two topics, i.e. cultural impact assessment and soft war, are found heavily interlaced and falling short of precise implementation of cultural impact assessment intensifies the effects of soft war in the society and the causal and facilitative role of the absence of cultural impact assessment can be vividly observed in the occurrence of soft war. Considering partnership and competition as the primary elements of the country’s political development, taking cultural impact assessment into account in various plans can be followed by more people’s participation and presence and, on the other hand, the government can think about the stability of the political system and its agreeability in domestic and foreign scenes via increasing the people’s participation. Taking cultural impact assessment into consideration will be accompanied by people’s satisfaction of the implementation of plans and projects, increase in people’s participation, deepening and expansion of security, increase in agreeability and even legitimacy of the political system and the governing body. In line with this, the main study question is that “how an optimum cultural structure can be utilized for reaching a useful political and social development in Iran?” The present study assumes that consideration of cultural impact assessment in all plans and projects of the country will lead to political and social development of the country and/or facilitates the process of achieving political development because if people find faith in the idea that a development plan is in progress in the country and it is completely coordinated and adjusted to their cultural and ideological principles, basics and foundations, then, the understanding and digesting the development topic would become easier and, at the same time, no resistance and opposition would be made thereto and, in the meanwhile, they will make use of all their abilities and capacities for implementing and completing the plan. However, the present study tries investigating the cultural impact assessment issue and its relationships with political development in contemporary Iran.
