Iranian-Kurdish female fighters hold their weapons during a battle with Islamic State militants in Bashiqa, near Mosul, Iraq on November 3, 2016. (Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

An injured man is carried atop an Iraqi special forces armored vehicle during fighting against Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, March 14, 2017. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

This aerial photograph taken on January 27, 2024 shows a camel in the desert of Samawa in Iraq's southern province of al-Muthanna. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

Sharafkhaneh port and lake Urmia. Masoud Ghadiri (Iran). The summer Milky Way is very prominent in this photo. On the galaxy zone, Saturn is located besides the Lagoon nebula. On the right of the horizon, you can see the extreme light pollution of Urmia, which is caused by ever-increasing city development. (Photo by Masoud Ghadiri/National Maritime Museum)

A protester holds a poster displaying the message “Get away UK” during an anti-British demonstration in the Iranian capital that resulted in a break in at the British Embassy on November 29, 2011 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by FarsNews/Getty Images)

Fans in Star Wars costumes attend the world premiere of Disney's “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California on December 16, 2019. (Photo by Valerie Macon/AFP Photo)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Artist Ali Khalifa, center, draws graffiti at his old Kadhimiya district of Baghdad that needed municipal services, Iraq, Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (Photo by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo)