In politics, there is already the straw man, the paper tiger and the cookie cutter candidate. You can add "cardboard Khomeini" to that list of political phraseology after a very strange decision by Iran's military, in which they used a cardboard image of the late Ayatollah Khomeini to reenact his return after the Islamic revolution of 1977.

The Atlantic reports that the Iranian military created three individual cardboard cut outs of Khomeini for the ceremony.

One giant cardboard cut out was carried from a sitting plane at Tehran Airport to mark the "return" of the Ayatollah to Iran after 14 years in exile. Two uniformed military men then carried the cardboard stand down the tarmac, allowing it to "inspect" a group of Iranian soldiers. The regiment of soldiers actually then salute the cardboard sign.

After the imaginary inspecting, a second cardboard cut out was then placed inside a car and driven away, presumably to retake its place as the leader of the Islamic Cardboard Republic of Iran.

All of this transpired while a third cardboard cut out of the Khomeini observed the proceedings from a distance.