A week of tension, unity, and pain in Tehran

This week could be remembered in history as decisive for the Iran-United States confrontation since the Islamic Republic responded to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani launching a barrage of ballistic missiles on two U.S. bases in Iraq , followed by deterrence signals from both sides.

One thing is very clear for all: the death of the popular Soleimani has united the Iranian people behind the government of President Hassan Rouhani , as it was shown with the impressive and multitudinous expressions of grief and pain observed during the commander’s funerals across the Middle East nation.

“Our country feels different. We see a kind of unity that the younger generation has not seen, yet our parents tell us this is as when the revolution happened in 1979 , the year 1357 in our calendar,” Soureh , a student from Tehran contacted via Twitter , told EL UNIVERSAL in English .

For his part, Dr. Nader Namdar , translator, playwright, researcher, and former candidate to the Iranian Parliament ( Majlis ), stressed that U.S. President Donald Trump “has lost his reliability and has hit the Republican Party’s popularity with ‘ Ukrainegate ’. Iran is the best tool all the time for covering failures among U.S. leaders.”

Nevertheless, after Iran’s Wednesday attack on U.S. bases in Al Assad ( Al Anbar governorate , west of Baghdad ), and Erbil , considered the capital of the northern autonomous Kurdish region , “they are in a bad situation more than in the past. They were targeted directly and formally for the first time after World War II , even Trump’s warnings against the retaliation did not stop Iran; this means that assaulted nations can defend themselves,” he said.

Capitalism

and colonialism , Namdar affirmed, promote war by instigating in the Middle East “fake demonstrations, fake revolutions, fake democracy, endless civil wars, and mass depopulation of vast areas by forced migration using geophysical warfare,” as well as fostering Jewish and Islamic radicalism through Zionism and Wahhabism .

Non-Aligned Movement

He added that peaceful and civilized nations should create a strong and effective relationship within the Non-Aligned Movement or other international bodies, in order to “defeat any warmongering bloc, and any intervention to cause conflicts among countries.”

Soureh

, who is also a teacher and has been recently working on documentaries, added that Soleimani is seen “as the hero that did not let ISIS come to our borders, yet he was more than that to us,” because he was true with the people and for the people.

“He was not living in luxury houses, flying on private jets or stealing money. His lifestyle was simple, he was in a position where he could have everything and was honest, yet the most important thing, a concept that Western media does not understand, was his devotion to God. We have an Islamic term , ekhlas , which means doing things not for anything else , but for God ,” she highlighted.

“It has been crazy days, I have not slept properly. We are watching the news constantly, that is what almost everyone is doing here,” Soureh detailed after ruling out that Soleimani could have been a possible candidate for the presidential elections next year.

“You cannot imagine how people wept on the streets during his funeral. We lost a father ; actually my father reacted to the news about his death as if he had lost a son. I have never seen him as this before,” she said.

Soleimani’s murder puts the U.S. and Iran on the brink of total war

Editing by Sofía Danis

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