A long anticipated match between the two arch enemies United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran. To know who will win the soccer match we look at how well both countries perform on access to safe drinking water, sewage connections and access to hand washing facilities.

USA vs Iran general comparison.

As we already gave a general background about Iran and USA in separate article we will look a bit at similarities and differences between the nations here.

• The USA has the best women’s soccer team in the world. Iran’s women’s team is not the worst (anymore) but ranking a lowly 67th.
• Both countries have big populations with Iran 80 million and USA now 331 million
• The population of Iran and the USA are almost as religious (or unreligious) Iran ranking 93 and united states ranking 104
• There are no McDonalds in Iran.
• There are over 1.5 million Iranians of people with Iranian ancestry in the USA
• Both countries are growingly obese. Iranians have an average BMI of 24, Americans 26.

Percentage of population that can drink from a tap in their house

Iran. Iran provides most of its citizens with access to potable water. 94% of the people can drink from the tap directly. We tried to find out how much water people drink but couldn’t find reliable data. Based on the high obesity rates maybe the answer is: not enough.

United states.

There are some places in the USA were you cannot drinking from the tap like Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi, and parts of Pennsylvania . Otherwise tap water in the USA is safe to drink. So if you are American, stop drinking soft drinks, drink water instead.

Win for USA

Percentage of population that are connected to a decent sewage system or similar

United states.

98 percent of the US population has a toilet that is plumbed into a working sewage system. The USA is not present in the list of countries with the best sewers in the world. There are occasional sewer spills than annoy residents

Iran is not reporting its progress on sanitation facilities which we deeply lament. Some browsing led us to a Wikipedia page stating that 90% of Teheran is connected to a sewage system. Teheran is a large city but only the home of 10% of Iranians. Thus, we give Iran a score of 10% on this indicator.

Win for USA

Percentage of households where you can wash your hands with soap.

Iran and the USA both do not report on this. According to the article by Ganna Pogrebna Americans are decent hand washers even beating the Canadians with a small margin. Iran is not in this comparison but based on this article 80 percent of Iranian youths washed their hands after going to the toilet.

No winner

Overall prediction : USA WINS