A common journalistic practice in order to create sympathy for someone is to invite readers or viewers to share that person's grief.  We watch or read about crying parents, spouses, children, and friends as they describe in heart-wrenching detail the wonders of the person who died and the deep emotional pain they're experiencing.  What's weird is to see the AP applying that technique to the pain Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-Khamenei is experiencing now that President Trump literally blew apart his friendship with General Qassem Soleimani.

From the article's very first paragraph, we're invited to feel Khamenei's pain:

In a rare display of emotion from the typically reserved and measured supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cried openly Monday at the funeral of slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani, his most important military commander with whom he shared a deep bond.

"Oh Allah, they are in need of your mercy, and you are exalted above punishing your servants," Khamenei said in prayer as he stood over a flag-draped casket with the remains of Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Friday.

Khamenei's voice cracked under the weight of the moment during a funeral procession unlike any in Iran's recent history.

That poor, poor man.  He lost his best friend and chief terrorist to violence, and now he's alone, all alone.  The article acknowledges that this dear friend had a little blood on his hands (he was "overseeing Iran's proxy militias abroad, ranging from Hezbollah in Lebanon to armed factions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen"), but that's nothing.  What matters was the bond that Khamenei and Soleimani had:

Their relationship was so close that Khamenei was photographed more than once embracing Soleimani in ways that are customary in Iran for fathers and their beloved sons.

In one such photo from 2018, Khamenei, seated on an elevated platform, leans down and kisses Soleimani's forehead. In another image from 2017, Khamenei is seen kissing Soleimani's cheek during Ashoura, a religious day of mourning among Shiites.

Unlike other military commanders in the Revolutionary Guard Corps., the 62-year-old general answered only to the 80-year-old Khamenei.

Khamenei so revered him that he awarded the general Iran's highest military order in March. Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported that Soleimani is the only Iranian military official to receive the Order of Zulfaqar since the revolution.

When pinning the medal on Soleimani, the Iranian leader said he hoped God would reward the general and help him live a blissful life that ends with martyrdom.

"Of course, not any time soon," Khamenei said, adding that the "Islamic Republic needs him for years to come."

Lest you think Khamenei's deep love for his young employee was unrequited, it was a two-way street.  Soleimani revered Khamenei to the point of a higher spiritual bond:

To Soleimani, Khamenei was a venerated spiritual figure whom he referred to as his "dear and honorable leader." In 2015, Soleimani was quoted saying: "I ask God to sacrifice my life for you."

They were so close that Iranian media described the slain general as Khamenei's own Malik al-Ashtar, a reference to the most loyal companions of the first Shiite leader, Imam Ali.

Reading all this, it's difficult to tell if the article's author, Aya Batrawy, is trying to get people angry at President Trump for severing this relationship in such a heart-rending way or whether he's trying to get people to appreciate Trump even more than before for having killed a mass murderer and left his mentor curled up in unrelieved mental anguish.

Whether the article reflects the media's usual anti-Trump bias or not, it's really funny — and that's not just because of the passionate purple prose quoted above.  Whether wittingly or unwittingly, Batrawy slipped in a little joke about the funeral obsequies:

And in death, Soleimani has received what no man before him has in modern Iran. His funeral processions have been spread over several days and cities, marking the first time Iran has ever honored a single man with such ceremonies.

Given that Soleimani was sent home in a cardboard box, rather like a disassembled jigsaw puzzle, one can only wonder whether each of the funeral processions that will be "spread over several days and cities" got its own special Soleimani pieces to revere.