Arab states

The hosting of Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the announcement of Saudi Arabia's preparation for the 2034 made the world wondered for the new Middle East in the coming years. On the one hand, political experiences such as war and extremism groups, and on the other hand, the main source of oil and gas supply in the Middle East is a proof of the need for countries in the region to use football as a lever in changing the international image. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the position of football and the development process of football in the Middle East region, focusing on the three countries of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE, and finally, the reason for Iran's conflicts with some of these countries in region. While the sport has a critical role on empowering the international prestige of Gulf states, football is the critical part to fill the power vacuum in region. Football has two minor (media, airlines and tourism) and micro (Geopolitics, geo economy, competition and political economy) impression on region.

Today, sports diplomacy with different countries is one way to develop the sport at an international level. The current paper was conducted with the approach of improving the diplomacy of sports federations of Iran and Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The paper is qualitative, applied, and was carried out using Colaizzi's phenomenological methodology in 2022. Moreover, Participants in the research included individuals related to the subject. Furthermore, the sampling method was purposeful, and until the extraction of completely non-repeated strategies from the interviews; 21 interviews were conducted in a semi-structured manner. Factors affecting the improvement of the diplomacy of the sports federations of Iran and Arab states of the Persian Gulf consist of 75 primary strategies in the form of 11 main categories including: media content, behavioral norms, infrastructure development, management strategy, political dimensions, security dimensions, sports interactions, international solidarity, sports communication, national prestige, and educational experiences. Some of the solutions identified include benefitting from popular social networks such as Instagram to share common content with Arabic language sports pages, no provocative interviews by athletes and coaches, preventing spectators from chanting racist slogans, facilitating the entry conditions of Arab spectators in international sports competitions in Iran and mutual support of the sports federations in Iran and Arab states of the Persian Gulf to the sports representatives of the Middle East region in sports events at the world level.