The importance of the category of spiritual heritage in terms of its numerous effects, especially the need to preserve and strengthen social capital, has caused countries to pay special attention to this heritage in the light of international documents and Internal laws. The most important international document in this area, to which Iran has also joined, is the UNESCO International Convention on Intangible Heritage (2003). With this description and despite the fact that the protection of this heritage against its violations is justified and even necessary based on jurisprudential-legal foundations, in the internal laws of Iran one can find few regulations that recognize the aforementioned duty. The current research, by choosing the qualitative research method and conducting targeted interviews with experts in various legal fields, has sought to identify the most important challenges of protecting spiritual heritage in Iran. In this regard, the interviews were continued until the saturation of information and their analysis was done using the open and axial coding method. Finally, based on the findings, the lack of special provisions for the protection of spiritual heritage in particular, as well as the lack of a single and coordinated criminal policy in general, has caused the protection of this type of heritage to have no place in Iran's legal system. Therefore, the application of a coherent criminal policy, as well as the presentation of a desirable criminal model in order to protect this type of heritage, requires optimal policy making, the formulation of special laws or special regulations.