Describing the role of sports in empowering military-political security

The events of Imam Reza (AS) Stadium in Mashhad, after Iran's qualification to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, once again invited the country's political-military decision-makers to intervene in sports affairs; The purpose of this study was to explain the position of sports in empowering political and military security; The present study was qualitative in terms of applied purpose and in terms of how to collect data, which was done as content analysis; The statistical population was equal to the statistical sample equal to 13 experts in the field of political science and sports sciences (books, articles, notes, etc.); Purposeful sampling (snowball) continued until after the interview using Delphi technique with 13 people reached theoretical saturation. The findings of the present study showed 24 concepts related to sports in providing military-political security in eight categories: conflict resolution (4.56), regulation (4.30), development of political economy (4.24), personal characteristics (4.21), national cohesion and unity (4.18), peacebuilding (3.98), empowering values (3.96) and public peace (3.94) were categorized. According to research findings, sport has a function beyond the issues of entertainment and recreation in modern society today. It seems that paying attention to the emerging phenomenon of sports can alleviate many of the existential and challenging threats to the national security of the Islamic Republic.