Identification of Strategic Elements of Sports Diplomacy based on Soft Power in Expanding Iran's International Relations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates

The main goal of the research was to Identification of strategic elements of sports diplomacy based on soft power in expanding Iran's international relations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In the first step, by examining the theoretical foundations and research literature, a questionnaire related to the foundation's data theory was designed in order to extract the components of the strategic model of sports diplomacy in facilitating Iran's international relations with the countries of Qatar and the UAE, and information was collected by conducting 16 interviews with experts in this industry. In order to test the model, the community of experts active in the sports industry was used. The following categories of Media policy, Sports cultural diplomacy; Sports economic and commercial diplomacy; Sports public diplomacy; Sports platform diplomacy; Sports political diplomacy and Strategic sports diplomacy were used to design the model. For testing the relationships, Spearman's correlation test method, structural equation model and regression were performed on the data. Results indicate that economic diplomacy, strategic diplomacy and political diplomacy constitute the basis of the model.