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)

People board a passenger bus during rush hour at a bus terminal, amidst the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Mumbai, India, September 9, 2020. (Photo by Niharika Kulkarni/Reuters)

American soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battle Company, on a battalion-wide mission in the Korengal Valley, looking for caves, weapons caches and known Taliban leaders, 2007. Tanner Stichter tends to Spc. Carl Vandeberge in the bushes moments after Vandeberge was shot in the stomach during a Taliban ambush, which killed one soldier and wounded two others. (Photo by Lynsey Addario)

In this Friday, February 6, 2015 photo, sandhill cranes begin to stir after resting for the night at a roosting location along their winter migration route in Cecilia, Ky. According to counts made by biologists with the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Resources, about 12,000 of the birds have stopped in Cecilia this week during their winter northward migration on their way to their nesting grounds in the Great Lakes region. (Photo by David Stephenson/AP Photo)

Naki'o, a mixed-breed dog with four prosthetic devices, goes for a run in Colorado Springs April 12, 2013. Naki'o lost all four feet to frostbite when he was abandoned as a puppy in a foreclosed home. (Photo by Rick Wilking/Reuters)

A man takes a photo as a puff of smoke comes from Mount Agung volcano, taken from the Rendang sub-district in Karangasem Regency on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on November 23, 2017. Thousands living in the shadow of the rumbling volcano on Indonesia's resort island of Bali fled on November 22 as fears grow that it could erupt for the first time in more than 50 years. (Photo by Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP Photo)

Storks that were saved by Bulgarian farmer Safet Ismail are pictured in the village of Zaritsa, Bulgaria, March 21, 2018. Dozens of people from villages in north-eastern Bulgaria took storks to their houses as a lot of the birds got injured due to freezing temperatures and snowfalls in the area over the last few days. (Photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)