Slate
The death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, a domestic and regional terrorist organization, was not a cause for grief—particularly in the midst of a crackdown in which as many as 1,500 Iranians had been killed, and thousands more detained since the outbreak of protests in Iran in mid-November.
The international media focused more on the masses of Iranians that came out to mourn for Soleimani’s death. Indeed, many did set out in the streets to engage in state-sponsored mourning ceremonies, not dissimilar to what many of us recall from Ayatollah Khamenei’s death in 1989. Nevertheless, many Iranians stayed at home and did not participate because they did not consider him a hero of any kind. Soleimani, whom even many of his critics considered a military genius, was arguably the most integral figure behind the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Shia expansionist military operations in the Middle East, most importantly Syria and Iraq. Domestically, many speculated that he may have had the highest chance of becoming the next supreme leader, given his relatively young age, his influence and the trust and admiration of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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