TEHRAN – The Avini Art and Cultural Institute has said that plans to make a miniseries featuring a 2019 plot to assassinate Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, former IRGC Quds Force chief.

Sirus Moqaddam, director of the popular TV series “Paytakht”, “Madineh” and “Mikail”, will helm the miniseries entitled “Assassination”.

This docudrama “intends to depict the higher political and military status of the soldier of Islam,” the institute said in a press release on Monday.

In March 2019, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ Intelligence Organization said that it had uncovered a plot to assassinate General Soleimani by “an Arab-Hebrew intelligence service.”

The organization said the assassination team had been arrested and the plot had been foiled. 

To implement the plot, the team composed of three persons was tasked with purchasing a house adjacent to a hosseinieh, a place for seasonal Islamic rituals in Kerman, which belonged to General Soleimani’s father.

The team planned to transfer about a half ton of explosive materials through a tunnel dug beneath the hosseinieh and set it off when General Soleimani attends the Tasua or Ashura rituals of the year.

The IRGC Intelligence Organization said that it was even monitoring the team members when they were sent to the neighboring countries to receive the necessary education for the mission. 

The organization said that the team was arrested just few days before Tasua or Ashura.

General Soleimani narrowly survived several assassination attempts during his missions outside of Iran.

However, he was martyred in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. 

Afterwards, he has been the subject of several films, including the documentary “Liberation of Amerli”.

Directed by Hamed Hadian, the documentary premiered at the Cinéma Vérité festival in Tehran in December 2020.

The documentary underlines the key role Iran’s Quds Force played in breaking the 89-day siege of the northern Iraqi town of Amerli by the ISIS terrorists.

Amerli, an Iraqi town of Shia Turkmen located in the Tooz District of Saladin Governorate, was besieged by the ISIS terrorists in June 2014, cutting off access to food, electricity and water. 

On August 31, the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the IRGC under the commandership of Qassem Soleimani, joined the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and the Popular Mobilization Units – Hashd al-Shaabi, breaking the siege, which was described by some top analysts as Iraq’s biggest victory against ISIS.

Another major documentary about General Soleimani is “Green Zone”, which studies the commendable conduct of the commander towards children.

Photo: General Qassem Soleimani in an undated photo.

MMS/YAW