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Editors Note: Under President Trump, the United States has stepped up pressure on Iran, and the clerical regime has pushed back against U.S. allies and U.S. forces in the region. These confrontations have led to fears that a war between the United States and Iran might break out. Michael Eisenstadt of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy argues the United States and Iran have not been on the brink of war and, in fact, Iran has a gray zone strategy designed to put pressure on the United States and its allies but avoid an all-out conflict.

Daniel Byman

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A popular narrative to emerge during the past year of Iran-U.S. tensions is that on several occasionsparticularly after the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in JanuaryIran and the United States were on the brink of war. This narrative has been promoted by Iranian officials who encourage the beliefas part of their efforts to deter the United Statesthat a local clash could easily escalate to an all-out war. It has likewise been promoted by President Trump, who stated in a private talk to TV anchors in February, with typical bravado, that war with Iran was closer than you thought. And it has been promoted by a variety of journalists, academics and think tank analysts. Yet, this widely accepted version of events distorts reality, precludes a clear-headed understanding of Iranian and U.S. actions, and hinders an effective policy response.

The counterpressure campaign that Iran launched in May 2019 against Americas maximum pressure policy (the ostensible goal of which is a better deal with Iran covering nuclear, regional and military issues) has relied on activities in the gray zone between war and peace. These include covert or unacknowledged attacks on petrochemical infrastructure and transportation in the Gulf, proxy attacks on U.S. military personnel in Iraq, and clandestine cyber operations. Indeed, Iran is perhaps the worlds foremost practitioner of gray zone operations (although China and Russia have also long employed this modus operandi). For nearly four decades, Americans have struggled to understand and to respond effectively to this asymmetric way of war.

Actors operating in the gray zone test and probe to determine what they can get away with. They engage in covert or unacknowledged proxy activities to preserve deniability and avoid becoming decisively engaged with the adversary. They rely on incremental action to create ambiguity regarding their intentions, and to make their enemies uncertain about how to respond. And they arrange their activities in time and spacepacing them and spacing them geographicallyso that adversary decision-makers do not feel pressured to act rashly. This enables them to challenge stronger adversaries and advance their own agendas while managing risk, preventing escalation and avoiding war. In gray zone competitions there is no well-defined brink that marks the transition from peace to war. Rather, these are murky, ambiguous, slow-motion conflicts characterized by occasional escalatory peaks and deescalatory troughs.

Irans gray zone strategy works by leveraging a number of differences in the way that Tehran and Washington think and operate. The most important of these differences is conceptual. U.S. decision-makers have tended to conceive of war and peace with Iran (as well as with other significant state actors such as China and Russia) in stark, binary terms and have frequently been constrained by fear of escalationcreating opportunities for Iran (and others) to act in the gray zone in between. (The main exception hereby and large a relatively recent oneis in the cyber domain.) By contrast, Tehran tends to see conflict as a continuum. The key terrain in gray zone conflicts, then, is the gray matter in the heads of those American policymakers who believe that a local clash could somehow rapidly escalate to an all-out war. The result is often U.S. inaction, which provides gray zone operators such as Iran greater freedom to act.

Tehrans interest in avoiding war and its preference for operating in the gray zone are not grounded in a transitory calculation of the regimes interests; it is a deeply rooted feature of the regimes strategic culture that is reflected in its way of war, as well as the Islamic Republics strategy under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This is one of the enduring legacies of the Iran-Iraq War, which killed nearly a quarter-million Iranians and left the country with still-unhealed wounds. Iran is determined to never again repeat that experience. Likewise, for the United States, the long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have seared in the nations consciousness a strong desire to avoid future Middle Eastern forever wars.

Thus, Tehrans entire modus operandi is intended to prevent escalation and avoid war. During the first seven months of the counterpressure campaign that it launched in spring 2019, all of Irans attacks were nonlethalby design. Iranian forces placed limpet mines on the hulls of oil tankers, targeted unmanned U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, and conducted precision strikes against sparsely staffed Saudi oil facilities. When these initial steps did not induce Washington to respond militarily, or to lift or ease the economic sanctions imposed after it left the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, the Islamic Republic escalated in the space left by U.S. inaction with a series of progressively larger rocket attacks in Iraq by its Kataib Hezbollah (KH) proxy, until an American was killed there in late December. This set in motion a series of eventsa U.S. counterstrike that killed 25 KH militiamen, violent demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by pro-Iran proxies (evoking dark memories of the 1979-1981 Tehran embassy hostage crisis and the 2012 murder of U.S. Amb. Christopher Stevens by Libyan terrorists), and tweeted taunts by Khamenei that America cannot do a damn thingthat prompted the United States to target Soleimani and KH commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in early January.

Yet, when Iran retaliated five days later with a missile strike on Al-Asad air base, it gave advance warning to the Iraqi government so that Americans there had time to shelter. (U.S. intelligence had also picked up warning signs of an imminent missile strike.) Afterward, both the United States and Iran signaled publicly that they considered the current round over, although rocket fire against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq has continued since then. Khamenei subsequently warned that the Islamic Republic will never forget the martyrdom of Hajj Qassem Soleimani and will inevitably strike a similar blow against the U.S.

This sequence of events should demonstrate that the United States and Iran were not on the brink of war in January, for several reasons. First, events following the killing of Soleimani indicate that risk and escalation management were priorities for both Tehran and Washington; nothing that has happened since alters this assessment. Second, for more than 40 years, Iran and the United States have avoided wardespite Iranian-supported kidnappings and attacks in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq that have killed hundreds of Americans; clashes at sea toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War that killed scores of Iranian sailors; the accidental U.S. shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet in 1988 that killed all 290 passengers; and numerous other incidents. And finally, since 2017, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes on Iranian military infrastructure in Syria, killing at least eight members of the IRGC (according to Iranian sources), without sparking a war.

Yet, history is replete with examples of war through miscalculationand both the United States and Iran have each miscalculated at least once already. The U.S. maximum pressure policy crossed an Iranian redline dating to the 1980s, which states that if Iran cannot export oil, it will work to prevent any other Gulf state from exporting oil either. In trying to drive Tehrans oil exports to zero, Washington backed Iran into a corner and incentivized it to lash out with a military counterpressure campaigna response for which the United States was inexplicably unprepared. Likewise, Iran crossed a U.S. redline by killing a U.S. citizenand by organizing violent protests by its Iraqi proxies in front of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in December 2019, it likely contributed to the U.S. decision to target Soleimani and Muhandis. These episodes show, however, that while miscalculations are possible, they need not spark uncontrolled escalation or an all-out warthough it remains to be seen whether the killing of Soleimani was a master stroke or yet another miscalculation.

There are other ways the parties could stumble into a wider conflict. Tehran might be tempted to spring an October surprise (for example, perhaps the assassination of a U.S. official or a humiliating military strike) to sabotage Trumps prospects for a second termalthough this could backfire and give the president a boost at the polls due to a rally-round-the-flag effect. It might also provide a pretext for a tough U.S. military response. Should the president lose reelection, Tehran might be tempted to launch a strike before Inauguration Day as a parting shot to avenge the death of Soleimani. And should Trump win a second term, Tehran will have to decide whether to initiate a military crisis to catalyze diplomacy that might yield a more comprehensive deal with Washington, or avoid provoking a triumphant and at times erratic president. But these scenarios would all involve the limited use of force by Iran, and it seems unlikely that Trump would suddenly abandon a core principle of his presidency and get the United States involved in yet another Middle East forever war just prior to an election, after failing in a bid for reelection or at the start of a second term. Should Iran strike before or shortly after U.S. elections, though, an unnerving series of ripostes remains a possibility. Some members of the administration might even welcome an election-eve crisis with Iran.

Moreover, should Khamenei become incapacitated or pass away, IRGC hardliners might opt for a more risk-acceptant approach toward the United States: They might launch a spectacular attack to avenge Soleimanis death and goad the United States to withdraw its remaining troops from the region. The ascension of IRGC hardliners to positions of leadership in the post-Khamenei era would likely presage an era of heightened U.S.-Iran tensions and conflict.

Another possible path to escalation might be provided by alleged U.S. (and Israeli) covert operations in Iran and against Iranian interests in the region. These might include activities such as the sabotage in June 2019 of an underwater oil pipeline off the Syrian coast used to transfer crude oil from Iranian tankers to the refinery at Baniyas, the preflight explosion of an Iranian satellite launch vehicle in August 2019, and a claimed attack in October 2019 on an Iranian oil tanker in the Red Sea. The United States may have also played a role in the sabotage of Irans principal uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, which reports have attributed to Israel.

In addition to these instances of apparently deliberate sabotage, there have also been a series of fires and explosions at industrial sites throughout the country in the past three months. Such events are quite common in Iran, due to the countrys crumbling infrastructure and lack of a safety culture. According to a study by the United States Institute of Peace, the number of such events that occurred from May to mid-July of 2019 (at least 97) is about the same number as have occurred in the same period this year (at least 83). So, while some of these incidents might be a result of sabotage or cyberattacks, it seems likely that most were not.

Yet, seemingly well-sourced reports from the United States and Israel bolster the impression that the two countries may be conducting their own narrowly focused, low-level gray zone campaigns against Iran through sabotage and cyberattacks on nuclear infrastructure and strategic research and development facilities. Whether this is true or not is unimportantperceptions are what matters. And herein lies the rub: Gray zone campaigns are generally most successful when a degree of deniability is preserved. When officials effectively confirm gray zone activities through media leaks or by other meanswhether for personal, political or propaganda purposesthey obviate some of the advantages of gray zone operations. And when covert actions that humiliate the regime are combined with further pressure on Tehransuch as U.S. efforts to snap back U.N. sanctions in the wake of failed efforts to extend the ban on arms transfers to Iranthe potential grows for Iran to up the ante if and when it retaliates. But escalationeven if unlikely to lead to waris not in the American interest, as it risks highlighting the limits of U.S. deterrence as well as Washingtons inability to protect its personnel and assets, its unwillingness to defend its allies, and the degree to which it may be constrained by domestic and foreign policy concerns. With U.S. presidential elections a little more than a month away, there is precious little chance of negotiating a new deal with Iran at this point. Increased pressure creates a heightened risk of escalation for little practical gain.

So, while claims that Iran and the United States were on the brink of war make for dramatic headlines, they do not reflect reality. To succeed in gray zone competitions, the vocabulary and mental models derived from Americas conventional warfighting experience must be put aside, as they obfuscate rather than illuminate, and preclude the kind of clarity of thought required to avoid further escalation with Iran. At the same time, U.S. policymakers should have learned from recent experiences with Iran not to underestimate the adversary or to overestimate their own ability to deter destabilizing actions. The enemy always gets a vote, and the potential gain proffered by a contemplated course of action should be weighed against the potential for escalation and harm to Americas reputation and credibilityas well as to U.S. deterrence going forward.

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Were Iran and the United States Really 'on the Brink'? Observations on Gray Zone Conflict - Lawfare

The Islamic Republic of Iran has sought to disrupt sanctions imposed on its effort to secure illicit weapons of mass destruction technology by using third party countries to transport the material, The Jerusalem Post can reveal on Friday.The German state of Hesse reported in its new intelligence report on Friday that "in particular, states such as Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria tried to acquire and distribute such weapons as part of the proliferation, for example, by concealing the transport routes via third countries. The aim of such intelligence measures was to circumvent control mechanisms over third countries that are not subject to special embargo regulations.The Post reviewed the 384-page intelligence report in connection with all references to the Iranian regime threat. The Hesse intelligence document covers the year 2019 and outlines the most pressing security threats faced by the state. The Hesse state intelligence services findings confirm the data collection of additional German state intelligence agencies in 2020 that declared Iran's regime continues to seek technology and material to build weapons of mass destruction devices.The Hesse intelligence agency wrote that it continued to pay particular attention to attempts at proliferation originating from Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria, i.e. the proliferation or transfer of weapons of mass destruction."Hesses intelligence service defined proliferation as the term proliferation refers to the spread or transfer of weapons of mass destruction as well as the acquisition of suitable delivery systems and corresponding technologies to states that do not yet have such weapons. In addition to the import of complete weapon systems, proliferation also includes the illegal procurement of components, relevant technologies and manufacturing processes as well as the recruitment of scientific and technical personnel.The report outlined the damage that could unfold if Irans rulers obtain the deadliest weapons in the world: Weapons of mass destruction continued to be an instrument of power politics that can shake the stability of an entire state structure in both regional and international crisis situations. cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });The report warned about Irans exploitation of the research and academic fields to advance its nuclear weapons program.Relevant states with illegal procurement methods are in particular Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. An example of this is the field of electrical engineering in conjunction with the use of centrifuges in the process of uranium enrichment. There are always suspicions here that foreign intelligence services are putting their own guest researchers under pressure in order to acquire the desired technical know-how. Another example of intelligence control is the exchange of research between university institutes in the field of chemical-biological processes, the intelligence agency wrote.German Chancellor Angela Merkels administration opposes an extended UN weapons embargo against Iran. Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and the US government have urged Merkel to join the US and impose snapback UN sanctions against Iran for its violations of the 2015 nuclear deal and its sponsorship of terrorism across the globe.The massive Frankfurt international airport is located in Hesse and the report did not detail if any of Irans illicit weapons proliferation activity took place in the airport. Irans regime, according to the report, may have been behind cyber espionage activity in Hesse.Cyber attacks on companies with a suspected Chinese, Iranian and Russian background continued, with activities with presumably state Chinese authorship increasing. The focus here was primarily on Frankfurt am Main with a number of institutions relevant in the financial world, noted the intelligence document.Multiple Iranian intelligence agencies are highly active in Germany. According to the report, The Iranian intelligence service Ministry of Intelligence (VAJA / MOIS) is a civil domestic and international intelligence service that has been active in Germany for years. In addition to the VAJA / MOIS, the foreign intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was particularly involved in spying on Iranian opposition members and pro-Jewish and pro-Israel institutions.

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Iran busts sanctions by using other nations to get WMD - German intel - The Jerusalem Post

Russian Defense Minister Shoigu and Iranian Defense Minister Hatami meeting in August (Source: Theiranproject.com)

The intensification of the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent days has overshadowed what may prove to be an equally, if not more, fateful shift in the Caucasus: the expansion of Russian and Iranian military-to-military ties, involving not only joint maneuvers in the Caspian Sea and the Gulf, but also Tehrans offer to Moscow to use three naval bases on its Gulf coast. Many Iranian commentators and some in Moscow now are even speaking about the creation of a Russian-Iranian military alliance that will allow the two countries to oppose the United States presence in the Gulf and threaten the vital oil shipping lanes that the US has helped keep open.

Russia and Iran have been talking about expanding such ties for several years. But in the last several weeks, their cooperationwhich Tehran has celebrated in Iranian media but which Moscow has, until now, understatedappears to have assumed a more concrete form. At least in part, this is because the United Nations restrictions on Irans importation of weapons from foreign countries, including Russia, will expire in mid-October. Both governments hope that Russia will then be in a position to sell much-needed military systems to the Iranians without inviting further sanctions (Zavtra.ru, September 28).

Talks between Moscow and Tehran about expanding military cooperation have been going on since the summer of 2019. At that time, the two sides reportedly signed an agreement to promote such ties (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, July 30, 2019), an accord that Tehran-based outlets boasted about even as Moscow officially kept silent. Then, in August 2020, a large Iranian military delegation came to Moscow to prepare for Iranian participation in Russias Kavkaz (Caucasus) 2020 military exercises and to discuss further steps toward realizing a military alliance, according to independent Moscow military commentator Konstantin Dushenov. In a recent article, he adds that the two sides agreed to conduct regular naval exercisesnot only in the landlocked Caspian Sea but also in the Gulf and its Strait of Hormuz (Zavtra.ru, September 28; Kaspiiskii Vestnik, September 21).

Russian as well as Iranian media outlets have stressed that the United States is alarmed by the prospect of such cooperation, citing an article in the US publication Military Watch (Military Watch, September 22). Washington does not want Iran to modernize its arsenal by purchasing Russian weapons, something that now seems likely unless Moscow unexpectedly changes course. But the US and the West will surely be even more alarmed if Irans reported offer of three naval bases for Russian useChabahar, Bender-Abbas, and Bender-Busheris acted upon.

Russian officials have not yet said whether Moscow will accept the offer, but independent security analysts like Sergey Ishchenko are confident that the Russian navy will do so and proceed, employing hybrid-like means, to transform a Russian presence at these three Iranian facilities into something more, thus establishing new Russian naval bases abroad just as it did in the case of Syria earlier (Svobodnaya Pressa, September 25). That may be more problematic than Ishchenko thinks given that the Iranian constitution bans foreign bases on the countrys territory and that Iranian society is notoriously suspicious of having any foreign forces on Irans soil. Yet Tehrans offer simultaneously suggests how difficult a situation militarily Iran now finds itself in and gives Russia, working with the Iranian navy or independently, a chance to dramatically expand its ability to project forces into the Gulf and beyond.

The Svobodnaya Pressa writer adds, however, that the prospect of Russian-Iranian cooperation, not only in the landlocked Caspian but in the Gulf, has already sparked fears among Washington officials about the future, as could be seen by what he described as panic following an Iranian drone attack on US naval vessels there last week. He suggests that Tehran may have been emboldened because it has Russia at its back; this cooperation thus opens the way, in Ishchenkos words, to drive the US out of the Persian Gulf. Additionally, he quotes Iranian Admiral Hosseyn Hanzadi as saying that from now on, Moscow and Tehran will regularly conduct joint maneuvers not only on the Caspian but in the Gulf, something that will complicate any US response. It is one thing for the United States to respond to any Iranian mischief there, and quite another to respond to something Russia is either doing behind Iranian cover or, eventually, boldly on its own.

All this is happening while the ArmenianAzerbaijani conflict continues in its latest hot phase, but it may not be unrelated to that development. Because Tehran wants Russian naval cooperation so badly, Moscow could be in a position to insist that Iran restrain itself from becoming involved in any way in the conflict between the Islamic Republics two northern neighbors, thus giving the Russians greater leverage there. That could help limit the conflict between Yerevan and Baku, but only at the price of opening the way to a dramatic expansion in Russias military presence beyond its borders against the West.

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Russia, Iran Expand Military Cooperation Against US and Europe in Gulf - The Jamestown Foundation

Khamenei aides criticism of Iraqs Sistani reveals disputes

Iraqi officials have condemned criticism of thecountry's top Shia cleric by a senior aide to Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In an editorial piece for the conservativeKayhan daily, Hossein Shariatmadari, a close confident of Khamenei, criticised Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's meeting with the UN secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

In themeeting on 24 September, Sistani urged the United Nations to send election observers to Iraq to monitor the countrys upcoming parliamentary elections.

One year on, has Iraq's anti-government protest movement changed the country?

Shariatmadari wrote of the meeting that "inviting the UN to observe the elections in one country is equal to announcing the bankruptcy of that country, of not believing in your own nation, and of having hope in outsiders".

Officials in Baghdad,from across the political spectrum, swiftly moved to condemn Shariatmadari's comments.

We strongly condemn the commentary published in an Iranian daily that offended the great leader (Sistani); such insults are offensiveto all Iraqis," said Iraqs former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, reformist Iranian politicians also voiced their support for Sistani.

"The great authority, his Eminence, Ayatollah Sistani is the fortress of Iraq, the security valve for the region, and an asset for the entire Islamic world," tweetedMohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister.

Esmail Qaani, commander of Irans Quds Force, also praised Sistanis role in stabilising Iraq.

Ayatollah Sistani is a symbol of glory and authority for the Shia [religious scholars], and an icon of mobilisation power in Iraq and all Islamic societies, he was quoted by the state-run ISNA news agency as saying.

The increasing pressure on Shariatmadari, who is an appointee of Irans supreme leader at the Kayhan daily, as well asa former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), forced him to officially apologise in a second editorial published on 29 September.

Reformist outlets used the controversy as an opportunity to criticise the usually untouchable Shariatmadari.

Does Shariatmadari have any understanding of Irans complicated [political] situation in the region, where the United Arab Emirates has signed a normalisation agreement with Israel and Iranian-Saudi relations are at their lowest point, the pro-reformist Etemad daily wrote.

Following a report by Reuters that Iran had doubled its oil exports in September, newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad has revealed the means used by the country's oil ministry to sell oil and petrochemical products while bypassing US sanctions.

According to the daily, oil swaps and ship-to-ship oil transfers are the main tactics Tehran has employed to get around Washingtons full embargo on its oil exports and banking system.

Iman Nasseri, managing director for the Middle East at FGE Consultancy, told Donya-e-Eqtesadthat Iranian oil tankers cross international waters and store oil in Chinese ports.

Owners of oil tankers seized by US deny they were destined for Venezuela

The daily also revealed that Iran offers high discounts on its crude oil and condensate to attract customers who were previously scared off by the sanctions.

Ali Asghar Zargar, an Iranian oil trade expert, explained that not all tactics used by Iranian officials to get around the sanctions are known yet.

Iran has been exporting oil with tankers sailing with the flags of other countries, as well as tankers turning off their GPS devices to avoid detection by the US, Zargar was quoted by the paper as saying.

According to Zargar, Irans largest oil sales takes place on the sea and through ship-to-ship transfers.

Moreover, oil swaps and exporting crude oil to neighbouring countries through rail transfers are other tactics used by Iran, he added.

Experts say that recent fuel shipments to Venezuela, another nation heavily sanctioned by the US, also help explain the spike in sales.

In May, a five-tanker flotilla carried over 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and components from Iran to El Palito port in Venezuela.

The trade between Iran and Venezuela received a tough response from the White House, and in August the US seized four tankers carrying 1.2 million barrels of petroleum, saying the tankers had departed from Iran en route to Venezuela.

However, three Gulf companies owning the tankers rejected the US accusations, saying that the tankers destination was Trinidad.

On Monday, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, confirmed that a three-tanker flotilla from Iran had entered Venezuelas territorial waters.

According to Tasnim, the three cargo ships carried 820,000 barrel of gasoline to Venezuela.

Despite an international outcry, three Iranian writers and members of the Iranian Writers Association (IWA), Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan Mahabadi and Kayvan Bajan have beensummoned to the Evin prison in Tehran to begin their jail terms.

On 26 September, the IWA posted photos on its Facebook account of a group of IWA members accompanying the three authors at the entrance of the prison, moments before they began their sentences.

Abtin and Khandan Mahabadi, both board members of the IWA, were found guilty on charges of propaganda against the state and collusion against national security at Irans Islamic Revolution Court, and were each sentenced to six years in prison.

Iran rejects Saudi accusation it trained terrorist cell uncovered in kingdom

Kayvan Bajan, a former board member of the IWA, was given a three-and-a-half-year jail term on the same charges.

According to the IWA, Irans security forces had filed the charges against theauthors to force them to stop publishing the IWAs internal magazine and halt their participation in the writing of a book about the history of the IWA.

During the trial of the three authors, the IWA slammed the government for putting pressure on independent writers, demanding it end the suppression of freedom of expression in Iran.

The only reason to put three members of the IWA on trial is due to their activities in advocating freedom of expression, and because of their opposition to censorship, the statement read.

At the same time, the international PEN organisation condemned the lengthy prison sentences for the Iranian writers and demanded the immediate release of the authors.

We stand in solidarity with our Iranian colleagues who are targeted due to their writing and peaceful activism,"said Rebecca Sharkey, campaigns and communications director of PEN International.

"We call on the Iranian authorities to drop all charges against them and to respect their right to freedom of expression.

The IWA, one of the most progressive art associations in Iran, was founded in 1968.

Despite its vital role in organising writers and poets against the Shah's administration, the association was banned after the Islamic Revolution in 1981, and a number of its members were arrested and killed.

*The Iranian press review is a digest of reports that are not independently verified as accurate by Middle East Eye.

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Iranian press review: Tensions flare in Iraq and Iran over criticism of Sistani - Middle East Eye

Babak Jeddi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesA billboard of Gen. Qassem Soleimani as nationwide protests demanded the avenging of his assassination by the US military, Tehran, January 7, 2020

One spring morning, on a return visit to Iran in 2015, I was sitting in a taxi stuck in traffic in Tehrans Towhid Square and scanning the image-plastered dashboard to kill time. I took in the familiar snapshots: Los Angeles singers like Dariush and Ebi, scantily clad Bollywood actresses, framed verses from Quran swinging underneath the rear mirror, and an amulet dangling from its little frame. But amid this collage, there was also a photo of someone I had never seen before: a severe but distinguished-looking uniformed man. I pointed to the picture, and spoke.

Do you like Soleimani? I asked the taxi driver.

Oh, of course, he said. Hes my man. Then, seeing the confusion on my face, he added, I hate mullahs as much as anyone, believe me. But Hajj Qassem is different.

It was after that encounter that I began to notice how ubiquitous the image of Soleimani, a man whose name few people had known just a few years earlier, had become. In the windows of corner stores, on top of car trunks and van doorsposters of him were everywhere. Just like my cab driver, ordinary people had begun to revere him despite his steadfast loyalty to the system so many of them despised.

To urban liberals like me, this widespread adoration of Qassem Soleimani was baffling. He had never wavered in his commitment to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the Quds Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) under Soleimanis command, had proved vital to propping up Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Soleimanis surge in popularity after the Iranian intervention in Syria was also connected with the prevailing belief that it was he who had defeated ISIS. Without Hajj Qassem, according to conventional wisdom in Iran, that army of evil would have overrun the borders of Iraq and attacked Iran itself, raping women, enslaving children, and staging public beheadings. Soleimani had saved the nation.

Finally, as if Soleimani hadnt been romanticized enough, the US military, at President Trumps behest, assassinated him by drone strike on January 3, 2020, in a fashion that happened to neatly align with Shia martyrdom mythology: the central narrative of the holy day of Ashura involves a mighty power shedding the blood of a heroic underdog in a cowardly fashion.

Iranian officials were swift to launch a campaign integrating the loss of Soleimani into their daily political messaging. The campaign began immediately after Soleimanis killing, and it remains in full force today. His face is everywhere, writ large and small on billboards and on walls, on posters and in graffiti, on paper and on screens.

This commemoration of Soleimani as the ultimate martyr is the latest manifestation of the Islamic Republics long history of communicating political messages in graphic mediaa particular cultural tradition of propaganda. It is no overstatement to say that an understanding of Iranian politics today rests on the knowledge of the part murals have played ever since the regime came to power in 1979.

The first face of the revolution to become its leading icon was, of course, not a soldier but a cleric. There were colored photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini, noted V.S. Naipaul in the travelogue of his first visit to Iran in that momentous year (published in The Atlantic in 1981), as hard-eyed and sensual and unreliable and roguish-looking as any enemy might have portrayed him. Naipaul got many things wrong about Iran at the dawn of the revolution, but there was something in this observation that was spot-on. Khomeini looked hostile. He never smiled. His piercing eyes, set deeply in his haggard face under a heavy black turban, stared belligerently at the camera. The mistrustful glare conveyed a clear message: I am watching you.

I was a child in the Eighties, and my memories of that decade almost all have an image of Khomeini embedded in them. His face was plastered on every empty wall in my hometown of Ahvaz, on our TV screens, even on the first page of our textbooks at school, and later on, after his death, on all bill denominations. The ubiquity of his likeness spoke absolute power.

Murals were a crucial element of Khomeinis propaganda machine, particularly during the IranIraq War. Some of those war murals can still be found on walls in Tehran and in other cities. They followed a simple template, involving a portrait of Khomeini accompanying wartime martyrs, innocent-looking young men, highlighting both their sacrifice and their complete devotion to the leader.

Mural artists essentially functioned as morgue masters: they took photographs of dead soldiers, sanitized the blood and gore, and refigured them as celestial beings taken up into the embrace of the divinea technique Hamed Yousefi showed in his 2013 documentary, Sanat-e Farhang-Jang (The culture industry of war).

With the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the end of the war, which came within a year of each other, the ideological zeal that had engulfed the country in the immediate post-revolutionary period soon abated. The discourse shifted from martyrdom to managerialism: suits replaced uniforms, beards were trimmed short, battlefield commanders gave way to engineers. Women still had to wear full hijab, but they moved from support work behind the frontlines to jobs behind desks. Over the course of the Nineties, under presidents Akbar Rafsanjani and then Mohammad Khatami, only distant echoes of the tendentious ideology of the previous decade were heard.

This dramatic shift, reflected in the visual culture of the time, was clearly evident in newer public murals. The portraits of Khomeini and the martyrs lost their monopoly on city walls. A relatively obscure branch of Tehrans municipal government known as the Institute for Urban Beautification (also known as the Beautification Organization of Tehran) gained prominence. It favored colorful, somewhat kitschy work often with themes from nature or inspired by the love stories of classical Persian poetry.

An artist named Mehdi Ghadyanloo was particularly influential in changing the visual landscape of the capital in the early 2000s. A student of fine arts at the University of Tehran, Ghadyanloo responded to the call from the city authorities for a competition to decorate the thousands of empty walls in the city. He won the prize and got to work. Equally indebted to the surrealism of Ren Magritte and the Pop Art style of David Hockney, Ghadyanloo manipulated perspective to create fantastical but highly rendered scenes: in his murals, cars fly and people walk upside down, gigantic balloons soar through illusory ceilings, and vast voids fill flat surfaces, usually against the background of a pristine blue sky.

Unexpectedly popular, his murals soon became an intrinsic part of the urban landscape, reflecting his optimistic vision of a livable Tehran. Ghadyanloo carefully skirted politics. His images are soothing backdrops, offering a whimsical utopia amid the chaotic metropolis.

Official ideology never disappeared from public spaces, except that Khomeinis face was replaced by that of his successor, Ali Khamenei. But the fanciful and the doctrinaire coexisted on the walls of Tehranuntil Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf became mayor. This former commander in the IRGC turned police chief went on to hold the office for twelve years. (Earlier this year, he became speaker of parliament, a testament to the closed shop of political power in Iran.)

At the time he was first elected, in 2005, the city was undergoing major changes. A decades-long expansion of the city has seen a large portion of its population relocated to far-flung suburbs, and enormous, endless expressways now slice through the urban fabric. Tehran now feels increasingly hostile to pedestrians and most Tehranis spend hours commuting in cars, seeing the outside world in fleeting flashes. As a result, the old neighborhoods wall paintings have lost their former visibility and relevance.

This car-centered urban sprawl has ushered in the billboard era. Large vinyl surfaces mounted on thick columns, enabled by new printing technologies, have replaced painted walls. Overly excited at the creative possibilities, the Institute for Urban Beautification went in for extravagant experiments, like its 2015 billboard gallery of modern art that displayed gigantic reproductions of works by Kandinsky, Pissarro, and other Western artists for ten days on more than a thousand billboards in the capital city.

Around the same time, the mural artists working for the Institute, many of whom were visual artists with experience in galleries or as graphic designers in private companies, began to develop a new aesthetic for the political messaging they were tasked with conveying. In effect, they attempted a creative synthesis of the nonpolitical style of Ghadyanloo with the pure propaganda of the Imam and martyrs imagery.

Anti-American themes, often crudely rendered, have long been a staple of Iranian murals. But in the mid-2010s, at the height of the nuclear talks, the Institute artists started co-opting Western cultural symbolism to convey the untrustworthiness of the US as a negotiating partner.

In this example, the Iranian representative and the US envoy sit across the table from each other. On the right is the Iranian, neatly dressed, his hands on the table to show he has nothing to hide, one fist clenched in determination. In contrast, the American slouches in his chair, his body language exuding arrogance. Beneath his diplomats white shirt and suit jacket, he is wearing military fatigues and combat boots. Under the table, he brandishes a gun.

Another example appropriates the famous photograph of American marines raising their flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jimaexcept that here they are planting the Stars and Stripes not on a Pacific island but on a heap of destruction: broken bodies, demolished houses, and exploded cars. The iconic image of American heroism is turned on its head.

For the most part, though, this more sophisticated propaganda filled these billboards for only a few days at a time. The forces of exploding consumerism in Iranian society ensured that the space was soon taken by commercial ads. And for most of this latter period, the state itself seemed at a loss for a coherent, stable, visual theme to underpin its political mobilization. It was not until the assassination of Soleimani that it found one to replace Khomeini, who had died more than thirty years earlier, in 1989.

This first major billboard response to the Soleimani assassination was striking in its austerity of design: Soleimanis stylized likeness against a huge, blood-red field. The phrase your blood challenges any adversary, inscribed in a computerized Nastaliq calligraphy, barely makes sense in English. More literally translated as your blood calls for rivals, it draws on cultural and linguistic understandings inaccessible to non-Farsi speakers.

Harif talabidan (to challenge, to call for rivals) refers to part of an ancient warriors practice, radjaz. By this custom, a rhetorical exchange would take place on battlefields of ancient Persia before two armies clashed: the mightiest warrior from each side would soliloquize, praising his own side, shouting out to his ancestors, and enumerating his reasons for confidence in victory, while at the same time hurling insults and deprecations at the enemy lines.

The verb harif talabidan almost always has a human subject, yet here the subject is khoun (blood). This billboard thus works as a succinct, modern radjaz, itself challenging on the enemies of the Islamic Republic to combat.

A different billboard featuring Soleimani (below) appeared at Vali Asr Square, one of the busiest central hubs in Tehran. Saluting the passersby, Soleimani stands at the head of a crowd designed to represent Iranians of all walks of life. The caption, which is taken from a well-known 1979 revolutionary song, translates as Lets move forward together, and sing in one voice: Viva, our beloved Iran!

By Iranian standards, this billboard is notable for its diversity and inclusivenessyet not a single cleric is represented. Save for three women in chador, no one even appears to be of a particularly religious bent. In fact, some of the women portrayed here, should they walk down the streets of Tehran wearing their scarves that way, might be stopped by the religious police.

This contradiction with official ideology reveals the intention behind the image: aware of the deep discontent in Iranian society, the authorities are using Soleimanis popularity in an effort to repair their tattered legitimacy with their disaffected citizensremoving themselves and leaving only the general to represent the establishment.

Soleimanis assassination has also provided the state with an opportunity to rekindle nationalist pride, a rallying point of support for Iran as a power in the region. In this image, Soleimanis face has become a sort of map of Iranian strategic influence. The caption reads, Soleimani is still alive, with the hashtag #hardrevenge. Soleimani lives on as the personification of Iranian regional ambitions.

Palestine occupies a special place in this theme. The generals martyrdom creates space for imagining a world in which the armies of the Islamic Republic vanquish the Zionist enemy and celebrate the liberation of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

In this mural (below), Soleimani appears against the backdrop of the mosque. The simplicity of the image and its medium harken back, with an almost anachronistic quaintness, to the 1980s, when Khomeini and revolutionary martyrs appeared everywhere on city walls. Beneath Soleimanis prayerful hands, the caption reads: Quds [Jerusalem] is the compensation for your blood. Yet Soleimanis mild expression belies the martial message: he looks meeker than usual, his hair and beard whiter than they actually were. The modesty of his demeanor is perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of how distant the dream of a such a conquest in his name is in reality.

That restraint is absent from this detailed representation, below, of the utopia envisioned by the Islamic Republic. It connects a triumphant moment in post-revolutionary Iranian history, the breaking of the siege of Khorramshahr during the IranIraq War, with the future capture of Jerusalem: Quds will be the next Khorramshahr.

The only identifiable Iranians in the image wear the IRGC uniform. Having taken over the al-Aqsa Mosque, they are celebrating with ordinary Palestinians. Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are represented through symbols on and around the jeep in the foreground. The man on the hood is holding a portrait of Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas, along with Hamass original flag. Above him, another man is waving the flag Hamas has used since 2007, when it took control of Gaza. The Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyehs likeness appears several times, given pride of place thanks to his close ties with Soleimani. The yellow flag in the back of the car belongs to Liwa Fatemiyoun, an Afghan militia that also fought in Syria under Soleimanis supervision. The ensign of Hashd al-Shaabi, an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group, also features, while the blue-and-white flag of Israel burns. The only sign of the PLO is atop the mosque in the background, where a forlorn-looking fellow timidly waves the groups banner (the PLO is dominated by Fatah, Hamass rival for Palestinian leadership).

All told, this billboard represents the most elaborate treatment of the post-Soleimani utopia envisioned by the Islamic Republic, a detailed cartoon-graphic account of its idea of compensation for his blood.

This vast, nationwide campaign of commemoration for Soleimani aimed, above all, to exploit his popularity as a symbol of national unity while saber-rattling to advertise the countrys power to exact revenge on Soleimanis assassins. In reality, both national unity and retribution have proved to be chimeras. Beset by domestic corruption and severe economic sanctions, Iran has problems that run too deep to be dispelled by poster art.

Indeed, it now looks as though the disjunction between the regimes official messaging and its relative impotence has caused the martial, militant tone to give way to a very different mood. The following, erected at the same spot as the Call for Rivals billboard, exemplifies this transformation.

The occasion for this image is the newly designated National Daughters Day. The caption reads: With my angels, I am close to the heavens. Relegated now to the background, to the left of a youthful, caring father, Soleimanis framed portrait hangs on the wall, beneficently watching over the happy family, presumably from those same heavens.

In another, similarly themed poster, two other girls are delighted at the sight of a cake. The wall behind them is decorated with a childs painting of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali. The image was created to celebrate the Shia anniversary of the Prophets designation of his cousin Ali as his successor, an occasion that has nothing to do with commemorating Soleimani, yet here he is again, holding the two girls in a framed photo on the shelf, as if a family member himself.

In this new phase of messaging, Soleimani is no longer at the center; a framed version of him hovers in the background, the national trauma of his loss soothed by the pious but gentle incorporation of his memory into Iranians daily domestic life. From the bold promises of bloody revenge to the proclamation of regional hegemony and fantasies of revolutionary justice, and finally to the quiet commemoration of the martyred general in the family home, the Islamic Republic is enacting its need to heal this wound to the nations pride on the walls of Tehran.

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The Martyrdom of Soleimani in the Propaganda Art of Iran - The New York Review of Books