The hosts edged out two closely fought sets 26-24 and 25-20 before their opponents lost any remaining willpower as they slumped to a 25-13 loss in the third set to crash out of the tournament.

Germany and Belgium featured in the only five-setter of the round.

Belgium began in confident fashion to take the first set 25-17.

Germany then pegged them back to 1-1 with a 28-26 second set victory.

Once again Belgium edged in front before losing in a mammoth fourth set 29-27 as the match went to a tiebreaker.

Germany went on to win the deciding set 15-9 to progress to the next round despite scoring fewer total points than Belgium with 106 to 112 respectively.

Germany's Jannes Wiesner was the difference maker as he claimed 29 of his side's points to top the charts for the match.

Elsewhere in the tournament, Italy demolished Nigeria 25-14, 25-17, 25-17 to win 3-0 in just over an hour.

Italy's middle blocker Cosimo was the player of the game as he rattled 14 points past his opponents.

Every other game in the round resulted in a 3-0 whitewash.

Argentina is set to face hosts Iran in the quarter-finals after beating Thailand.

Poland will come up against neighbours Germany in the next round following its 3-0 dismantling of Colombia.

In the other half of the bracket, Bulgaria will meet Italy as it breezed past Egypt 3-0.

Brazil and Russia make up the last quarter-final matchup as they beat India and Cuba, respectively.

The losing teams have gone into a separate tournament to decide the ninth to 16^th placed finishers.

The matches are scheduled to be played tomorrow in the Iranian capital at the same time as the quarter-finals.