The US and Iran go to war Today! ... on a football pitch. The two sides meet in their last first-round game of the Qatar World Cup, and whoever wins will almost certainly advance to the knockout stage — a first for Iran. But this time, the long-running geopolitical tensions between the two bitter enemies have taken a back seat to the ongoing women-led protests against the government in Iran, the biggest the country has seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.