Why did Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei launch a propaganda show as Suleiman’s funeral? Khamenei was surprised at the latest events which he did not expect. In a nutshell, he was checkmated and tried to give his frustrated forces an injection of morale by launching this disgusting circus.
Supporting Bashar al-Assad under the pretext in defending the holy shrine
For Khamenei, Qasem Suleimani was an irreplaceable, right-hand man in advancing the strategy of exporting terrorism and extending the ‘strategic depth’ of Iran’s regime to Aleppo, Damascus and the Mediterranean. It was Qasem Suleimani who supported Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, sent thousands of Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, Hezbollah and Basij militia troops to Damascus and created a bloodbath in Hama, Homs and Aleppo, and elsewhere, and prevented the fall of al-Assad.
Occupation of Iraq
Suleimani never gave the Iraqi people the opportunity to bring a democratic government by the people’s request and vote. He used mercenary elements such as Hakim, Nuri al-Maliki, Hadi Ameri, and Faleh Fayyad, during the 18 years after the toppling of Iraq’s former leader by the United States.
Many of them were trained in Iran during the Iran-Iraq by the IRGC. They prevented the spread of democracy in Iraq and held key positions. They launched a sectarian war, terrorized Iraqi intellectuals and liberals, and turned the country into Iran’s backyard. A country that Iran’s regime had failed to occupy even a small town during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war was gifted in a silver platter to it by the US.
Lebanon, the fracture of a nation
Another achievement of Qasem Suleimani was turning Lebanon into a politically shaky country; he managed to turn the Lebanese government into a hostage, with the help of a number of political parties in the country and the material support of the Shiite party as a political and military arm.
No one could occupy the post of prime minister in Lebanon without the support of Hezbollah, and anyone who wanted to prevent the domination of Hezbollah, the Iranian regime’s proxy in Lebanon, suffered the fate of Rafiq Hariri. Lebanon makes a part of the Shiite crescent that Khamenei aspires to capture in the region. Although the youth of Lebanon are now revolting against the current situation, with the disappearance of Suleimani, they received their greatest help to create a new democracy in the country.
Yemen, proxy war of attrition
The coup in Yemen and the continuation of the war that could have ended many years ago is nothing more than a futile fire to extort from the Saudis and the Arab nations. If the Houthi’s coup succeeded, many parameters would now be different in Yemen. The years of war, which, according to independent military experts, would have no side that would be the winner, nothing but destruction and death for that country. Perhaps the death of Suleimani can open the way for the Yemeni people to get out of the crisis of a civil war.
The fate of the latest example of an international criminal
For many years, Suleimani and the Quds Force created constant tension and wars in the region, and with the massive blood that was poured, he was able to continuously draw attention away from the regime’s interference in other places, giving the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his regime the opportunity to carry on their nuclear and missile projects.
The appeasement policy towards Iran’s regime which was prevalent by the international community, along with the leverage of terrorism, removed all possible obstacles, and for many years it was only the organized Iranian Resistance that stood against the regime and was awakening the conscience of the international community to condemn the regime’s interventions and crimes in the region.
History repeats itself
The history of criminals who have committed atrocious killings and crimes against humanity is abundant, and of course there are many such criminals in the mullahs’ regime, Ali Sayyad Shirazi, the Iranian Kurdish people’s killer, Asadollah Lajevardi the butcher of Evin, and Ebrahim Raisi, one of the main perpetrators of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.
Virtually all the IRGC’s leaders are among those who have committed mass killings, whether in Iranian Kurdistan or Khuzestan. Suleimani was one of those criminals who was constantly plotting and expanding the dictatorship of the Velayat-e Faqih regime (mullahs’ regime), and committing crimes were the only means of achieving the goal that lay ahead.
His special feature was his absolute loyalty to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. And he confessed that he was a ‘simple soldier’ for the Supreme Leader. Khamenei had the most confidence in him in the regime, while other regime officials failed to secure such a position by Khamenei.
A very good example of this in history was in Hitler’s era: during the rise of Nazism and its spread throughout Europe, there was a criminal named Heidrich who deeply believed in Nazi ideology, always thinking and planning to trap and destroy as many Jews and communists and liberals as possible, and when he was killed by anti-fascist partisans, Hitler arranged one of the largest and most unprecedented funeral ceremonies for him to reduce his fury over this extreme loss.
The greatness that collapsed
No one, like Khamenei, can have a real understanding of Suleimani’s absence at the top of the terrorist apparatus, and no one else knows how much he lost his authority in the Arab world and in the region, and especially in Iraq and Lebanon.
Khamenei understands that the awe of his regime is decreased and the structure that Suleimani built during the last 20 years in the Middle East has cracked and is near to a total collapse. He knows that the liberation movements in the region are now moving faster than ever before in the absence of Suleimani, and they will dare to reject his hegemony in the region.
Khamenei also knows well that no other IRGC officer can lead the terrorism structure that Suleimani has built. However, he is forced to fill the gap with another criminal, the deputy of Suleimani, Esmail Qaani.
That is why Khamenei tried to express his anger at Suleimani’s absence by conducting a large funeral and at the same time making a political maneuver.
All the departments of the regime have tried to warm up the show by threatening and luring students with better scores, or promising soldiers and the military with extended leave, closing offices and forcing the poor people from the south of Kerman to participate in the ceremony.
According to the state-run website, Khabarban, during the last 24 hours, some 94450 public transporters brought the people from other provinces to the Kerman province (Khabarban – 8 January 2020).
Of course, everybody knows that the regime has been very skilled in ruthless mobilization over the past 40 years, but the most important lesson of the events in the past days is nothing more than the fact that Khamenei is the main loser of recent events and the Iranian people and the resistance are the biggest winners.
Khamenei, in fact, by attacking the US bases in Iraq with missiles, shot himself in the foot with a series of losses in this gamble and ended up with another loss for his regime.
