Qasem Soleimani (Persian: قاسم سلیمانی, romanized: Qâsem Soleymâni; 11 March 1957 – 3 January 2020) was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the U.S. in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations. In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, as well as the second-most powerful person in Iran behind him. Soleimiani joined the IRGC Quds Force in 1979, eventually rising to commander. Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, Iranian diplomats under his direction cooperated with U.S. forces in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. Soleimani also provided extensive assistance to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 2012, following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Soleimani helped bolster the Syrian government and its president, Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally. He ran Iran's operations in the Syrian Civil War and helped plan and organize the Russian military intervention in Syria. Following the militant expansion of the Islamic State in 2014, Soleimani coordinated and assisted Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia militia forces in Iraq. Iranians credited Soleimani with the Iranian intervention in Iraq in Iran's fight against the Islamic State. During the Iraq War, the Quds Force oversaw the production and mass smuggling into Iraq of improvised explosively formed penetrator (EFP) roadside bombs, which, according to American estimates, were used by the Iraqi insurgency to cause 500 deaths and over 21,000 injuries to American soldiers. The Quds Force also planned and orchestrated what is thought to be the "boldest and most sophisticated" commando raid against U.S. troops in Iraq, the January 2007 Karbala provincial headquarters raid, and played a coordinating role in Hezbollah's defense from Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War, where Soleimani was personally involved. In the 2010s, Soleimani and his Quds Force played a key role in helping the government of Iraq defeat the Islamic State in 2014–17 and enabling Bashar al-Assad's Syrian government to achieve major victories in the Syrian Civil War at the same time, by coordinating the activities of various Shia groups from all over the Middle East. He was also crucial in securing Russian intervention in Syria on Assad's side in 2015, and personally led a commando operation that saved a Russian pilot after his jet was downed in enemy territory. These actions were instrumental in the creation, by the end of the decade, of the "Axis of Resistance", a territorially-contiguous network of Iranian-backed militias and organizations in the Middle East stretching from Iraq (Popular Mobilization Forces) through Syria to Lebanon (Hezbollah), and also including the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Yemeni Houthi groups. Soleimani was one of the masterminds, alongside Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh, of the creation and maintenance of Hamas' extensive tunnel warfare network in the Gaza Strip. His grand strategy of directing an extended network of allied armies and militias to advance Iranian interests in the Middle East was praised by his opponents, with former Mossad director Yossi Cohen saying in 2018 that Soleimani's asymmetric warfare strategies had shaped a geopolitical landscape in which "Iran effectively bordered Israel, through Hezbollah, but Israel did not border Iran. Soleimani had personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck", and FBI agent and Middle East expert Ali Soufan acknowledging that "Qassem Soleimani, should he be so minded, could drive his car from Tehran to Lebanon's border with Israel without being stopped. And the same route would be open to truckloads of rockets bound for Iran's main regional proxy, Hezbollah." For attacks orchestrated or attempted against American and other targets abroad, Soleimani was personally sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union, and was designated as a terrorist by the United States in 2005. The United States military assassinated Soleimani in a targeted drone strike on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. Iranian government officials publicly mourned Soleimani's death and threatened retribution; Iranian propaganda outlets subsequently represented Soleimani as a national hero. Western experts have called Soleimani "a genius of asymmetric warfare" and "the Võ Nguyên Giáp of the Middle East". A mass multi-city funeral was held in both Iraq and Iran for Soleimani. After his burial, the Iranian military launched missiles against U.S. military bases in Iraq, and the Pentagon reported that 110 American troops were wounded in the strikes.

Qasem Soleimani - Wikipedia