Slain Iranian General Soleimani Taunted Trump With Memes on Instagram

Promised to wipe the US off the map.

Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, had previously posted memes against the US and President Donald Trump on Instagram, reports the Washington Post.

The Iranian regime bans the population from using most social networks, but Soleimani was quite savvy online and had an Instagram account with 70,000 followers.

In 2018 he published a collage showing himself holding a walkie-talkie against the backdrop of the explosion of the White House, with the text “We will knock the US off its feet”. The frame was probably taken from the 2013 film “Olympus Has Fallen.”

Such collages were a kind of parody of Trump himself, who posted in this style on Twitter, including about Iran. On November 2, 2018, he announced withdrawal from the three-year nuclear deal and new sanctions against Iran. “Sanctions are coming,” — Trump said, rephrasing the slogan of the series “Game of Thrones”: “Winter is coming.”

Trump’s post was not addressed specifically to Soleimani, but the next day the Iranian responded to him with another meme from “Game of Thrones” — “I will stand against you” (I will stand against you).

Instagram banned Soleimani’s account in April 2019.

He tried to oppose Trump not only through memes on Instagram. In 2018 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made a statement: “America must know that peace with Iran — is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran — is the mother of all wars.”

Trump was offended and tweeted in all caps: “NEVER, NEVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES, OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES, THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW HAVE SUFFERED THROUGHOUT HISTORY.”

A few days later Soleimani responded to Trump, and that is how he became known in the US for the first time: “Responding to you — is beneath the dignity of our president. If you start a war, we will end the war. You know that this war will destroy everything you have.”

Soleimani led the elite Quds Force unit within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On December 31, protesters set fire to the US embassy in Baghdad, for which Trump blamed Iran and vowed that “a very big price” would be paid. Two days later, Soleimani was killed in an airstrike near the airport in the same Baghdad.

Iran promises to retaliate, while thousands of American troops have been deployed to the region amid fears of a new war.