The Facilitating role of sport in foreign relations of the US and Iran

Abstract

Attractiveness and effectiveness are the two main global features of sport; The Islamic Republic of Iran's “soft power”, after fourteen years of its revolution, has been influenced by various macro and micro concepts that have been repeatedly challenged by Western countries, especially the United States. So, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in light of recent years' successes in the international field of sports, including seventeenth among the 206 countries in the Olympic 2012 can use this capacity to expand its interactions in the international arena. The purpose of the present study was initially to explore the concepts of strengthening Iran's soft power through sport and to design a favorable paradigm for the development of diplomatic relations with Western countries, especially the United States. Then, SPSS and PLS software were used to investigate the correlation between variables based on Spearman's test, exploratory factor analysis and finally structural and interpretive modeling of independent and dependent variables. The findings showed that seven factors of financial development, devout, conversion, civilization, cohesion, governmental issues and friendship were in four levels influenced by Iran's international sporting environment.