Fernando Delgado

In the contemporary global landscape, nations strive to portray themselves as modern and open societies, employing various tools, such as art diplomacy, scientific diplomacy, and sports diplomacy, as a compelling facet of public engagement, especially over the past two decades. This study aims to scrutinize the role of sports in interactions of Iran and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The research was descriptive based on qualitative technic that was done by two round Delphi interviews. The participants consisted of 14 experts of sport policy and international relations and the data collection involved an examination of diverse sources, including articles, books, and websites of Google Scholar, Taylor Francis, and Sciences Direct. The qualitative section indicated three concepts of sport diplomatic interactions of Iran and SCO countries included: Economic, Political and Cultural factors. The findings also highlight Russia and China as promising prospects for fostering sports diplomatic interactions with Iran. Sports events that secure medals, notably gymnastics and swimming, benefit significantly from enhanced bilateral and multilateral exchanges within the sports competitions framework among Shanghai Cooperation Agreement nations.

The outbreak of war in Ukraine at the same time as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics once again called the world sports to engage in international military warfare. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of sports deterrent in the prevention of international military wars. The present study was a qualitative-netnogeraphy method, which was conducted by studying various websites and social networks such as Instagram and official websites of BBC sport, CNN sport, ABC sport, Varzesh TV, Olympics and FIFA World Cup pages. The results indicated that sport sanctions of Russia categorized to personal (8) and organizational (21) concepts. Although Sports is a non-political phenomenon, it can play as a peace-making factor to decrease the political and military pressure on nations. Today, athletes, because of their billion audience on social media and messengers, have an irreplaceable impact on the public, including efforts to curb violence, aggression and incitement to war, including effective sports in promoting international peace.