Qasem Soleimani, Iranian Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - elite Quds Force, was considered one of the most influential military operators in the Middle East.
The 62-year-old, who was killed hours ago in a strike by US army in Iraq, shouldered responsibility for Iran’s selective operations abroad, such as those in Syria and Iraq.
According to Washington Post, Soleimani earned himself near-mythical status among his enemies and idolization by his Iranian hard-line supporters.
Soleimani was born in 11 March 1957, in his youth, he moved to the city of Kerman and worked as a construction worker to help repay a debt his father owed. In 1975, he began working as a contractor for the Kerman Water Organization. When not at work, he spent his time lifting weights in local gyms and attending the sermons of a traveling preacher, Hojjat Kamyab, a protege of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Soleimani joined the Revolutionary war Guard (IRGC) in 1979 and began his military career in the beginning of the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s during which he commanded the 41st Division.
He was later involved in extraterritorial operations, providing military assistance to anti-Saddam Shia and Kurdish groups in Iraq, and later Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
He became a Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
and since 1998 commander of its Quds Force, a pision primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations.
On 24 January 2011, Soleimani was promoted to Major General by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei was described as having a close relationship with him, calling Soleimani a "living martyr".
In 2012, Soleimani helped bolster the Syrian government, a key Iranian ally, during the Syrian Civil War, particularly in its operations against ISIS and its offshoots. Soleimani also assisted in the command of combined Iraqi government and Shia militia forces that advanced against ISIS in 2014–2015.
In 2015, Soleimani started to gather support from various sources in order to combat the newly resurgent ISIS and rebel groups which were both successful in taking large swathes of territory away from Assad's forces. He was reportedly the main architect of the joint intervention involving Russia as a new partner with Assad and Hezbollah.
On 13 November 2018, the United States sanctioned an Iraqi military leader named Shibl Muhsin ‘Ubayd Al-Zaydi and others who allegedly were acting on Qasem Soleimani's behalf in financing military actions in Syria or otherwise providing support for terrorism in the region.
Prior to his assassination, attacks were carried out on the American embassy in Baghdad by supporters of an Iran-backed militia in Iraq as well as an attack targeted the 2019 K-1 Air Base.
The United States Department of Defense issued a statement that Soleimani had been planning further attacks on American diplomats and military personnel and had approved the attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad in response to U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on 29 December 2019 and was meant to deter future attacks.
He was killed after a missile targeted his convoy near Baghdad International Airport. He had just left his plane, which arrived in Iraq from Lebanon or Syria.
He had four children: two sons and two daughters.
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