Tuesday 24 February 2015

Qasem Soleimani, the El-Sisi of the Revolutionary Guards

RoozOnline

If until about two or three years ago Qasem Soleimani’s name was not known to many political analysts, today, for various reasons, he has turned into a well-known Iranian personality. As the Middle East region growingly turned into fire and blood, and flames of anger and violence rose from Syria, the name of this commander of Iran’s Qods Force belonging to the Revolutionary Guards also progressively began to appear in the media.

With DAESH, or Islamic State as it is called in the West, this picture grew in momentum. When news came that DAESH forces had approached Samarra in Iraq and then turned to Karbala and Shiite Islamic republic of Iran, Soleimani’s name appeared more frequently as a legendary hero in Iran’s government newspapers, as it also surfaced more prominently in the Shiite layers of the country.

Gradually, Soleimani’s photographs began to appear showing him in Iraq and along with Shiite groups allied to Tehran and even among Kurdish groups supported by Iran. But these photo of the general were not limited to the ruling hardline and conservative media but included the reformist media as well. Prominent pro-reform media in Iran printed and posted his images on their front pages along with catchy headlines. Things went so far that even a well-known Green Movement website praised Soleimani’s behavior and positions and asserted that he was different from the top commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Speaking about Soleimani, the IRGC top gun General Jaafari said he was the focus of attention of the enemies and he was “the bulwark of resistance in Iraq and Syria against the enemies.” These words were in contrast to Jaafari’s remarks just a few weeks earlier when he had said that Iran only provided advisory assistance to Syria’s Bashar regime. In other words, after DAESH gained ground in Iraq, the Islamic republic of Iran stopped masking its involvement in Iraq and Syria and began to openly pronounce that it not only had direct military presence in Iraq and Syria, but that this was at the highest possible level, the i.e., the foreign presence of a senior military commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

As DAESH forces gained ground and territory in Iraq and approached the Iranian border there, nobody cared to note the indirect role that they had played in giving DAESH cause to expand and revive in Syria. And nobody wrote about the impact and effect of the direct military involvement of Iran in this battle in Iraq and Syria.

By this time few had remembered that Soleimani was a signatory to the famous warning letter to pro-reform president Mohammad Khatami. That letter that was also signed by Aziz Jaafari (top commander of IRGC) and Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf (Tehran’s mayor) issued a threat to Khatami that the “patience” of the signatories with Khatami’s ways had “run out.” Nobody even remembered Soleimani’s message after the rigged 2009 presidential elections what he had said after millions had protested in the streets of Tehran and other cities against the rulers: “any weakening of the regime was haram (forbidden).”

The media affiliated with hardliners and conservatives constantly print Soleimani’s special qualities. For example, parliamentarian Mohammad-Reza Bahonar – a spokesman for the hardliners and conservatives – recently said, “Before we used to think that the only person whose political astuteness equaled that of the leader of the revolution was seyed Hassan Nasrollah (the Hezbollah leader of Lebanon). Now Soleimani is his equal.”

The political atmosphere in Iran that follows DAESH’s territorial expansions in the region also reveals the nature of other figures in the Islamic republic. One such example is Sadegh Kharazi who has family ties to Khamenei. He recently praised Soleimani and said, “The kindness, generosity, and grandeur that he (Soleimani) exhibits is unmatched. His capacity is even more. Look what he has done single handedly in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Afghanistan and our neighboring provinces. He is a dedicated, national and supra-national personality. What differentiates him is his powerful reasoning, morals and generosity.”

And in another speech, Kharazi praised the Revolutionary Guards and said had they not been active, DAESH would have by now been marching in the streets of Tehran. He called the Guards the “backbone of the country’s national security.”

When Soleimani’s photos with Vahid Haghanian, the senior detail of the supreme leader of Iran are published in official hardline and conservative newspapers and virtual media networks, when the chairman of Iran’s joint command of the armed forces praises Soleimani as a “brave commander of the Iranian nation,” when the top IRGC commander calls him “divine” and “godly hero,” and when Kharazi praises him with exceptional qualities, a meaningful picture emerges that speaks of a possible political-security-military project under way. This equates Soleimani with Egypt’s general el-Sisi. He sits in the shadows of the regime inside the Revolutionary Guards corps for a future eventuality.

When one takes into account the conditions of the region and the role that the IRGC has been growingly playing in Iranian politics, one should not be surprised if Soleimani is presented as a presidential candidate in the next round, just as Ahmadinejad was not seen as a serious contender until just a few months before the voting in 2005.

Egypt’s general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power through elections, in reality a coup – when the country was in turmoil and crisis. One should hope that conditions in Iran will not get worse and that civil society and the civil movement in Iran will remain alert and act more prudently than in the past. Otherwise, the security minded figures in the IRGC who have forced Rouhani to raise his voice in protest possess such economic, military and media influence in Iran that they are quite capable of turning Iran into a North Korea with a democratic façade. Precisely the kind of coup that Mir-Hossein Mousavi warned about prior to the 2009 presidential elections in Iran.




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