The mayor of Jiroft where a crude statue of the slain commander of Iran's Qods Force was unveiled promised to take measures to "correct" the statue after it was massively criticized and ridiculed on social media.

The 12-meter-high statue was unveiled at a square named after Soleimani in Jiroft in his home province of Kerman yesterday.

Nematollah Hosseinzadeh told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Tuesday that the contractor has been informed of the issues that experts have pointed out with the statue and will soon adopt measures to remedy them.

Another statue of Soleimani unveiled in Anzali in March had also drawn a lot of criticism for its crudeness.

"Even the United States couldn't do what the sculptor who made this statue did with Soleimani," a Twitter user said sarcastically.

Statue of Qassem Soleimani in Anzali in northern Iran.

The statues have also raised the eyebrows of some hardliners due to a traditional Islamic ban on creating likenesses of humans and other living beings.

The Quran does not explicitly ban human and animal representation, nevertheless, for many centuries a prohibition based on the sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad (hadith) has prevented artists from replicating human images.

The ban originates from the prohibition of idolatry and is considered as the main reason for the absence of human and animal figures in Islamic and Persian art where geometric and abstract floral patterns have developed to a high level of sophistication.

Despite the protests of some hardliner religious figures, the Islamic Republic is quite tolerant toward human representation in art, particularly as long as it serves the regime's propaganda machine. Human and animal forms are vastly seen in murals on the walls of cities such as the capital Tehran. These murals which are part of the urban framework are often commissioned by governmental entities for political and religious propaganda purposes.