Minds Behind Geopolitics: Political Psychology, Cognition, and Power in the Middle East an Interdisciplinary Personal Opinion Review

Geopolitical contests are not solely the product of material capabilities or institutional arrangements; they also reflect the ways leaders and societies perceive threats, interpret opportunities, and process information; this notion can be tracked in different political relations answering to such questions that why countries like U.S and the UK have better alignments in the level of leadership (Aghili Dehnavi & Fiedler, 2025)  Political psychology and cognitive science offer tools to unpack how biases, identities, and emotional heuristics influence decision-making in international politics. This concise review reinterprets recent Middle Eastern dynamics—sanctions, alliances, digital governance, and cultural soft power—through the lens of political cognition.