The head of Iran’s Quds Force, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, has returned to Iran from his Iraq trip with harsh words for both the Islamic State (IS) militants that overran parts of Iraq and the United States and its coalition.

Soleimani’s trip to Iraq to advise Iraqi forces fighting IS was unusually public for a general who has issued very few statements and given even fewer interviews throughout his career. From early September all the way through last week, numerous pictures of the commander, who Western media organizations often call “shadowy,” posing with Iraqi forces and sometimes even smiling for the camera appeared on Twitter, Facebook and Iranian websites.

The sheer quantity of pictures of Soleimani in Iraq with various armed groups seemed a like an Iranian message to neighboring countries and the United States and its coalition that Iran had boots on the ground while they did not.

Soleimani’s return to Tehran to attend a memorial for an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander was treated with the same media hype as his Iraq trip. Pictures of Soleimani standing next to commander Mohammad Ali Jaffari and talking to reporters were published on Iranian websites and social media pages.