There’s an Israel reference in this Wall Street Journal portrait of a member of the Basij, Iran’s feared volunteer paramilitary; the subject’s father fought Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s.
But read it because it is superb journalism, the kind that doesn’t exist without reporters able to spend days on end walking streets, making endless calls, living the story onsite, acquiring an intimacy with the subject. Farnaz Fassihi does the WSJ proud. It is fair and harrowing at the same time.
I don’t want to give anymore away, because it needs to be read.
And it has the most stunning kicker I’ve seen, ever.
