Reinhard Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS official during the Nazi era and the main architect of Holocaust. He formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"— the genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
He was extremely hated by people in the Nazi occupied territories. Finally, he was ambushed in Prague and died from his injuries a week later. After his death people did not feel sorry for him as they knew what a butcher he was. No one either called on international community for justice. Similarly, people of Iran, Iraq and Syria hated Soleimani and are now jubilant on his death.
People of Iraq still remember how Soleimani cultivated the Badir Brigade followed up by terrorist paramilitary terrorist groups like Hashd-Sha’bi to turn their homeland into Iran’s back yard and to suppress and massacre the opponents who did not tolerate the puppet government in Iraq and kill the protesters as late as in recent Iraq October protests by snipers coming from Iran.
That was why they took every opportunity to hit Soleimani’s photos with their shoes in the on-going protests and poured into the streets to celebrate in Al-Tahrir Square in Baghdad once they heard the news that Soleimani no longer existed.
In Syria, we see the joyful people generously offering free sweets and cakes to everyone while wishing Bashar Assad to be the next target. Syrians still remember that in 2012 when Assad was in a difficult situation and his army did not fight for him, Soleimani brought tens of thousands of foreign militiamen into Syria to fight for Assad at the cost of Syrian lives.
And lastly, in Iran my own homeland, people saw Soleimani’s loyalty to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as that of Heydrich to the Nazi Reich. Although the Quds Force which he commanded is assigned to missions outside Iran, Soleimani, as a member of the high command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had been a major contributor to the regime’s repressive machine inside Iran.
In July 1999, at the height of student protests, he signed a letter along with other IRGC commanders, warning then President Mohammad Khatami that if he did not put down the revolt the IRGC would intervene. “Our patience has run out,” the generals wrote. The police crushed the demonstrators, as they did again, a decade later.
Therefore, Soleimani was a hated figure. During uprisings in Iran in 2018 and 2019, protesters tore up and torched his posters in different cities. In recent November protests in Iran where 1500 people mainly the youth were slaughtered within few days, the same Soleimani tactic of killing by snipers was used as it was shown in various clips arriving from Iran.
The Iranian regime that has received an irremediable blow by Soleimani’s loss, immediately started a concerted propaganda to portrait him as a popular Major General. The truth was however very different. Iranian rulers, who are facing an explosive society highly abhorred by November 2019 carnage, badly need to be believed by the world on the fake mask they have put on the face of Qassem Soleimani in order to hide the fact that Soleimani was the darkest figure within the clerical regime otherwise taking revenge would be greatly illegitimate.
To those who are naively calling for justice on Soleimani’s death, I am saying: You are making a very big mistake; Iranian Mullahs have shown in the past that they have no respect for international law. Besides, they will never get close to any international court where they will themselves get caught to face justice for massive crimes against humanity they have committed. They only understand the language of force.
Therefore, as an Iranian youth and in the interest of my people, I sincerely underscore that it is vital for the international community not to be dubbed by Iran regime’s propaganda.
Let the jubilant voices of the families of those killed by Soleimani in Iran, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere be heard loudly and their hearts be slightly healed by knowing that a monster has paid the price for his vicious crimes.
Also, let the Mullahs know that the world community is aware of the true face of Soleimani not as a Major General but as a Major perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
By Ali Bagheri
