With a presence in nearly every city and town across Iran, the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps has an ever-increasing influence on life in the Islamic Republic. Authorities created the Basij, which means mobilization in Persian, just after the country's 1979 Islamic Republic. It is part of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Photo: In this Thursday, August 22, 2013 photo, a female member of the Basij paramilitary militia aims a rifle as a trainer looks over her shoulder in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A man prays to mourn victims of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in front of a ship brought ashore by the disaster in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. (Photo by Kyodo via Reuters)

2014 Underwater Photography Photo Contest winners, Wide angle marine life category, 3rd place. (Photo by Valda Fraser/UnderwaterPhotography.com)

Palestinian woman Jihan Abu Muhsen prepares her donkey with her son Kareem before going work collecting bricks for sale from sites of demolished buildings, at her dwelling in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 8, 2016. Abu Muhsen gathers bricks from the sites of demolished buildings and sells them to recycling factories. She earns around 20 shekels ($5) a day and her 10-year-old son Mohammad helps her when he is not at school. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

American stand-up comedian and actress Whitney Cummings fools around with photographers after she, Griffin Johnson, and Josh Richards have dinner together at Craig's in West Hollywood, CA. on April 6, 2021. (Photo by Backgrid USA)

Bangladeshi farmers busy to processing jute in Dhamrai outskirts of Dhaka on July 06, 2020. (Photo by Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Jakub Przygonski at the stage 1 of Dakar Rally, Pisco, Peru on January 7, 2019. (Photo by Kin Marcin/Red Bull Content Pool)

A vendor prepares her stall as she waits for customer at a street market in Taunggyi, Myanmar's northeast Shan Sate on November 13, 2024. (Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP Photo)