Qatar took advantage of the World Cup to promote its political agendas
If the World Cup in Qatar proves anything, it is that sport and politics are Siamese twins who do not separate from each other. Politics has appeared at every turn on the World Cup route, whether it is the right to freedom of expression for athletes, sports commentators and fans; about the anti-government protests in Iran. anti-Israel sentiment among Qataris and Arabs, a backlash against Qatar’s Western critics or an extremist religious rejection of football as a sport.
Exploitation of Arabs
According to the U.S. magazine Modern Diplomat, Qatar’s efforts to manage regional policy interference have ranged from selecting protests that fit its foreign policy agenda to seeking, where possible, to ensure that events elsewhere in the region would not overshadow or fuel emotions during the World Cup. Qatar has exploited Arab fans’ feelings toward Palestine and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause to promote its extremist agenda and declare support for certain jihadist groups that are rejected by the Arabs, ignoring its strong and covert relations with Israel. Qatar was the first Gulf country to inject funds into Israel when it financed a $6 million stadium in the Israeli-Palestinian majority city of Sakhnin in 2006, an investment long ago.
Relations with Iran
The US magazine confirmed that Iran, one of Iran’s most prominent partners, was a huge dilemma for Qatar in the World Cup, as maintaining relations with Iran allowed Qatar, at times, to be a background intermediary with the United States on issues such as the moribund talks to revive the Iranian War in 2015. Qatar therefore did not allow the arena to be used for expressing their views against the Iranian regime, and as a result Qatar sought to prevent flags, T-shirts, and pre-revolution anti-government flags from entering stadiums, the same problem was solved when Iran emerged from the World Cup in group roles.
It went on to say that the big issue is still there, as the World Cup in Qatar shows that FIFA’s insistence on the possibility of separating sport and politics is a political fiction, and what is more worrying is that FIFA and authoritarian World Cup hosts like Qatar can decide what is the appropriate and inappropriate expression of politics, this hardly makes the playing field level, and the starting point for any sport.
