Back when I used to be able to visit Iran, I remember always being surprised by the popularity of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary’s Guard Corps’ elite Al-Quds force, who was assassinated on US President Donald Trump’s orders in 2020. This was true even of Westward-looking Tehranis who loathed the regime and held parties where the alcohol flowed and the skirts were short.

Asked why, the answer was always the same. Soleimani kept the foreign threats destabilizing other countries of the Middle East at bay; he fought them abroad so they wouldn’t have to be fought at home. Islamic State, a Sunni-Islamist terrorist organization, could terrorize Shiites in Iraq and their Alawite cousins in Syria, but the streets of Tehran were safe.

Soleimani played on this. He’d be photographed wearing fatigues out with pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, carefully curating a near mythological image of daring and skill. This resonated, even though he stood at the core of a hated regime, because he seemed to hold the ring for what most Iranians craved: normal lives, safety and a chance at prosperity. They wanted a nuclear reconciliation with the US and Europe, allowing for sanctions to lift and investment to return, for precisely the same reasons.

But that was then. A 2015 nuclear deal was agreed but quickly eviscerated by Trump. The IRGC profited from the “maximum pressure” sanctions that followed, taking over much of the domestic economy and trade (which became primarily smuggling). Inflation soared. Private business withered. Living standards plummeted. And the........

© Bloomberg