Milad Ebadipour came up with 11 total points for Iran.
Ivan Zaytsev, the prolific and hard-hitting Italian wing spiker, had struggled in his team’s loss to Canada a day earlier but was back to his best in racking up 14 attacking points to comfortably see off Iran’s challenge.
Iran, who has lost to France, Japan and Italy and defeated Australia and Argentina, will face Canada Sunday night.
The competition is being held from May 25 to July 8 in 22 host cities.
The 16 teams compete in a round-robin format with every core team hosting a pool at least once. The teams are divided into four pools of four teams at each week and compete five weeks long, with a total of 120 matches.
The top five teams after the preliminary round join the host of the final round to compete in the final round.
The relegation takes in consideration only the 4 challenger teams. The last ranked challenger team plays the promotion play-off against the Challenger Cup winners. The winners of the play-off will qualify for the next edition as a challenger team.