The battle on the Iraq-Syria border, near Tanf, on Aug. 6 was fierce. In brutal fighting, jihadis had killed everyone except for a young Iranian man. Mohsen Hojaji, a fighter from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was apprehended and marched across the battlefield with death pervading the air and smoke billowing all around him. With penetrating eyes, Hojaji showed no hint of fear. Shortly afterward, his severed head was placed on his abdomen, with three children — one looking barely 5 years old — stepping on his decapitated body and his head.
For almost six years, Iranian hard-liners promoting military intervention in Syria were desperately looking for a story like Hojaji’s. Their argument was that shoring up the defenses of their long-term ally — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — would make Iran more secure. As such, Hojaji’s death was a gift from God to Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the shrewd and Machiavellian strategist in charge of the deployment of thousands of volunteers from across the Shiite world to Syria. "In order to glorify the significance of an issue, sometimes God creates an incident,” said Soleimani, nicknamed the “Living Martyr” in Iran. "Martyr Hojaji was for the glorification of the sacrifices of defending the [holy Shiite] shrines." Those who volunteer to fight in Syria have long been named “defenders of the shrine” in Iranian state discourse, referring to the Shiite shrine of Zeinab in southern Damascus.
