My cell guard’s tears put my jaw on the floor. Why ‘good’ Australians mourn a torturer

March 9, 2026 — 2:00am

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On January 3, 2020 I was alone in my cell in the section of Tehran’s Evin prison run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence service. Without warning, a guard I had come to know by the name Taraneh burst through the heavy steel door, tears streaming down her face. “A very good man has died!” she sobbed, “one of the best men we have in this country!”

I was friendly with Taraneh, she was one of the kinder IRGC prison guards. In happier times she would painstakingly correct my Farsi, and I would save pieces of kebab for her from my prison rations – food that she would package up and take back to her family, who she had confessed were too poor to afford meat.

I gave her a hug. “What’s happened, who is this man?”

“Haj Qasem!” Taraneh wailed. “One of the kindest, gentlest, most decent men. He helped everyone, he was so selfless. He single-handedly defeated IS, he saved not just Iran, but the entire world…”

At this point my jaw was on the floor. Taraneh was of course, talking about Qasem Soleimani, head of the IRGC Qods force and one of the most successful and notorious terrorists ever produced by the Islamic Republic. The architect of Iran’s “axis of resistance” strategy, and the mastermind behind the IRGC’s devastating intervention in the Syrian civil war. Donald Trump had bombed a man who had more blood on his hands than almost anyone in Iran’s regime, other than the Supreme Leader Khamenei himself.

Why Iranians are celebrating being bombed

Kylie........

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