A month after the war in Iran started, workers at ports and oil fields in the province of Basra, where almost all of Iraq’s crude is produced and exported, have grown accustomed to rockets streaking across the sky, aimed at U.S. air bases and other strategic facilities.

Portions of the Middle East have certainly become more dangerous for Americans since the war with Iran began, including Iraq, where an American freelance journalist was kidnapped.

Iraq will end their 40-year wait to appear at a World Cup this summer Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP via It was in the hour that followed the full-time whistle inside Monterrey’s Estadio BBVA that the significance of the moment struck Ali Al-Hamadi.