A lion in winter

AS IRAN’S most prominent security operative, Major-General Qassem Suleimani has long been respected at home; but as a creature of the shadows. That changed when pictures of him appeared on social media from the battlefields in Iraq, directing the fight against Islamic State and pushing its jihadists back from the approaches to Baghdad. The 58-year-old commander of the Quds Force, the foreign wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), quickly became a celebrity, even winning a Man of the Year poll. With Iran keen to project its growing influence in the Middle East, the pictures of General Suleimani were at first tolerated and then actively encouraged in state-run newspapers. He even acquired a parody Twitter account, and some admirers fawningly dubbed him “Supermani”.