Iran’s Message to World: You Need Us to Fight Islamists

In the fight against Islamic extremists, the commander of Iran’s secretive special forces is turning into an unlikely celebrity.

Iranian television published last week a picture of Quds Force Major General Qassem Suleimani on an Iraqi battlefield surrounded by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. That photograph, widely shared on Twitter and other social media, is the latest of Suleimani to appear since the fall of the city of Mosul to Islamic State. Even in the constrained Iranian media, Suleimani sightings, which once were rare, are now common.