We covered the city with his face. Smiling, in plain clothes, reproduced on a painted square. Shady, in uniform, at the end of a street. Receiving a tender kiss on the temple from the Guide of the Revolution, Ali Khamenei, over the entire surface of a large poster hung above a speedway. Surrounded by stylized flowers or ballistic missiles on the rise. The features of General Ghassem Soleimani, assassinated on January 3, in Baghdad, by an American drone fire, float, as if by retinal persistence, on the dark facades of the capital, along the road bridges which span the greyness of whole districts , above fruit stalls, in the windows of mobile phone stores, on the rear windows of cars that crowd in endless traffic jams, coughing with exhaust gas. "They are all hiding behind his portrait, now …", will say a young Tehranese, using this third person of the plural with indistinct contours which indicates those of the mode, those which decide, visible and invisible.
For the celebrations of its forty-one years, on the eve of parliamentary elections under control who are expected to give the Conservatives victory, the Islamic Republic has the most prestigious martyrs whose murder brought the region to the brink of war. Soleimani was the face of the Revolutionary Guards' policy of regional influence, still represented alongside Shiite militias in Iraq or forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad's regime on the vast uniform battlefield, which, seen from Tehran, seemed to extend to the west of the country.
Alive, thanks to these propaganda images disseminated on social networks, Soleimani had become the embodiment of the defense of the country as much as of the "axis of resistance", an extension from Baghdad to Beirut, via Yemen, d 'an Islamic revolution which knows no borders. He had gained, in passing, a notoriety and a popularity to which no other officer could claim. Dead, he breathes new life into the Islamic Republic’s story and story factory.
The traitors of the interior
"The future is General Soleimani. His martyr is the regeneration of our revolution " summarizes Hossein Shariatmadari, close to Ali Khamenei and editor of the daily Kayhan, a body dedicated to defending the ideological fundamentals of the Islamic Republic and the guide's voice. At the age of 70, this former guardian of the revolution belongs to the generations who saw the shah fall, Ayatollah Khomeyni return from exile and who went through eight years of war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq between 1980 and 1988.
