Ceremony to Mourn Qasem Soleimani in Tehran

Women mourn the death of Major General Qasem Soleimani, at a commemoration service in Tehran, Iran, on 4 January. Major General Qasem Soleimani (62) was killed on 3 January at Baghdad airport, along with other Iran-backed militia figures, in an air strike ordered by US president Donald Trump. The US had pursued Soleimani for years, claiming that operations in neighboring Iraq had killed hundreds of American military personnel, and the Pentagon said the air strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. Much of Soleimani’s career had been spent at the top of Iran’s Quds Force— the foreign operations wing of the elite paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In recent years, the US had seen him as the mastermind behind Iran’s expanded influence in proxy conflicts in the region. Soleimani was dubbed a ‘living martyr of the revolution’ by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Millions of Iranians attended funeral ceremonies for him.