The latest Call of Duty game has a plotline with extreme similarities to the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in January 2020 by US forces.
The characters depicted in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II have clear parallels to the real-life event that saw tensions between the US and Iran boil over after US President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike to kill the top general in Baghdad airport.
Videos by VICE
The videos of the game, which is out on the 28th of October, were released on social media by people who had early access.
The “Strike” mission shows an arms deal between a group of Russians and an Iranian general called “Ghorbrani,” who have gathered in an arid fictional location of Al-Mazrah in the fictional United Republic of Adal, surrounded by a dozen armed men and trucks loaded with missiles. The player has to locate the Iranian general before a guided missile blazes through the group.
Images of the Ghorbrani character show he even has a white beard like Soleimani’s.
Soleimani headed the Iranian Quds forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is responsible for a network of armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, which receives support from the regime in Tehran against US allies in the region.
In real life, Soleimani was killed by Hellfire missiles fired by drones at Baghdad international airport after he arrived on a flight from Syria on the 3rd of January, 2020. The Iranian general was declared dead alongside his Iraqi protege, Abu Mahdi al Muhandis.
The game features 17 missions to fight a “global terrorist” threat to the US from Russia, which has partnered with Iranian and Mexican cartels.
The game has been repeatedly criticised for glorifying violence to its players, many of whom are young, with scenes of life-like clashes.
Popular cultural references have often been used in the propaganda war between US and Iran. In January this year, the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released an animated video of a drone strike on Trump while he played golf at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Before ordering the killing of the Iranian general, Trump got into a social media battle, posting Game of Thrones-inspired images with a caption saying “sanctions are coming” in response to the posts by Iranian supporting accounts threatening the US military presence in the region.
The latest video game release is likely to face backlash from the Iranians, who often reply with less technologically advanced video games of their own, portraying the US as the bad guys.
