Terror organization: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

Status: was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian Civil War through securing Russian interventio

Role: In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the second-most powerful person in Iran behind Khamenei

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.

Soleimani was assassinated by a targeted drone strike on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. Iranian government officials publicly mourned Soleimani’s death and launched missiles against U.S. military bases in Iraq, wounding 110 American troops. Iranian outlets subsequently represented Soleimani as a national hero.

The Quds Force had cultivated relations with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the 1990s under the leadership of Soleimani’s predecessor, Brigadier-General Ahmad Vahidi, and the 1995 Kfar Darom bus attack. Soleimani strengthened these relations during the Second Intifada, when he and Hezbollah chief of military operations Imad Mughniyeh oversaw the smuggling of weapons to the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions, according to Lebanese militant Anis al-Naqqash.

After the 2007 imposition of a blockade on the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt, Soleimani’s Quds Force has been active in supporting the further construction of tunnels under Gaza and the smuggling of weapons through these tunnels to the armed wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 2021 senior Hamas representative to Lebanon, Ahmad Abd al-Hadi said:

The idea of [digging] tunnels… Today there are 360 kilometers of tunnels in Gaza. There are more than 360 kilometers of tunnels underground. I won’t go into details on this. Two people came up with the idea of digging these tunnels: The first is the martyred commander Imad Mughniyeh, and the second is Hajj Qasem Soleimani who went to Gaza more than once and contributed to the defense plan from the moment it was first drafted. I am not divulging any secret, by the way. The enemies know all this but what the enemies do not know is way more than what they do know.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command Secretary-General Talal Naji also said in a 2021 interview:

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made a great contribution and invested a lot of effort in developing the military capabilities of the Palestinian resistance through training, developing weapons, and teaching our comrades among the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank how to manufacture weapons and rockets. As you know, there are difficulties in transporting these weapons and rockets to occupied Palestine. Even in transporting weapons, Iran made an effort to support us in transporting weapons by way of sea, as you know. Let me tell you about what I heard from General Qasem Soleimani, may he rest in peace. He said: ‘We sent ten ships full of weapons.’ Most people probably do not know about these ships. Most people know about one ship, called Karine A, which was raided by the Zionist enemy in the Red Sea. By the way, the Karine A was sent to the martyr Yasser Arafat, to the brothers in the Fatah movement – not to Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the PFLP-GC, the PFLP… No. It was sent to Fatah. Ten ships were sent to the various factions of the Palestinian resistance in Palestine. This was in the beginning, when we were transporting weapons. The martyr Jihad Jibril – the son of Abu Jihad, Ahmad Jibril – was assassinated by Zionist gangs in Beirut. His car was blown up on May 20th, 2002. They killed him because he was in charge of transporting weapons from Lebanon to Gaza. He sent three ships from Lebanon to the Gaza coast, far out at sea. The weapons were thrown from the ships in tightly-sealed barrels. We coordinated with the brothers in Hamas. The martyr Jihad Jibril asked them to send divers and small boats in order to retrieve the barrels from the sea and bring them to the coast, and we used to split the weapons, and even give most of the weapons to them, because of their size and their responsibility. He used to give them most of the weapons and we took some of them. This was in the beginning. Then, at a later stage, under the supervision of the martyr Qasem Soleimani, that our people who waged resistance in Gaza should be able to manufacture weapons, and even develop rockets. At first, it was very short-range rockets. They used to have a range of 2 kms. The weight of the payload was very limited, and thus its impact was minor. If a rocket has a 2 km range, and its payload is small, then the impact is weak. General Qassem Soleimani supervised the development of these rockets, in cooperation with the brothers in Syria. Sometimes the training took place in the Islamic Republic of Iran, sometimes in Syria, and sometimes in Lebanon, with the brothers in Hezbollah who are waging jihad. As you know, we are an axis – the Axis of Resistance. Soleimani used to supervise these activities himself. He used to supervise these things himself, as you know. This has been disclosed by the beloved brother Hassan Nasrallah – how Nasrallah and Soleimani discussed the necessity to send quality weapons to the resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip. General Qassem Soleimani was the one who planned the delivery of the Kornet – the famous Russian missile that is used against tanks and heavy APCs. Kornet missiles were sent to the Gaza Strip and the Zionist enemy was surprised by this, when its tanks were destroyed. They have a tank that they are proud of, they consider it to be the pride of the Israeli arms industry – the Merkava. Merkava tanks were destroyed in 2009. This bore the hallmarks of General Qasem Soleimani, may he rest in peace.

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has disclosed the fact that Soleimani was present at the Palestinian Joint Operations Room in Damascus, Syria, throughout January 2009, overseeing operations against the Israeli Army during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has said that Soleimani was instrumental in upgrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities since he became head of the Quds Force in 1998 and helping transform Hezbollah into a fighting force capable of not only resisting but also deterring Israel

According to some sources Soleimani authorized the 12 May 2003 Riyadh compound bombings targeting Saudi and American interests in Riyadh, carried out by an al-Qaeda cell allegedly operating from Iran with the approval of the Quds Force

According to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (case Bernhardt v. Islamic Republic of Iran), Soleimani’s Quds Force had provided “sanctuary and mobility” inside Iran to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the man who recruited Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who in 2009 infiltrated the CIA posing as a Jordanian intelligence liaison and detonated a suicide vest inside the Agency’s Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan, killing seven high-ranking CIA officers

After the attack, the families of the victims sued Iran, and won a judgement of $268,553,684 on March 22, 2023. However, it is unlikely that the victims will receive any compensation, as the US Department of State noted in the case that “The United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with the government of Iran

In March 2007, Soleimani was included on a list of Iranian individuals targeted with sanctions in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747. On 18 May 2011, he was sanctioned again by the U.S. along with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and other senior Syrian officials due to his alleged involvement in providing material support to the Syrian government.

In 2007, the U.S. included him in a “Designation of Iranian Entities and Individuals for Proliferation Activities and Support for Terrorism”, which forbade U.S. citizens from doing business with him. The list, published in the EU’s Official Journal on 24 June 2011, also included a Syrian property firm, an investment fund and two other enterprises accused of funding the Syrian government. The list also included Mohammad Ali Jafari and Hossein Taeb.

On 24 June 2011, the Official Journal of the European Union said the three Iranian Revolutionary Guard members now subject to sanctions had been “providing equipment and support to help the Syrian government suppress protests in Syria”. The Iranians added to the EU sanctions list were two Revolutionary Guard commanders, Soleimani, Mohammad Ali Jafari, and the Guard’s deputy commander for intelligence, Hossein Taeb. Soleimani was also sanctioned by the Swiss government in September 2011 on the same grounds cited by the European Union.

On 13 November 2018, the U.S. sanctioned an Iraqi military leader named Shibl Muhsin ‘Ubayd Al-Zaydi and others who allegedly were acting on Soleimani’s behalf in financing military actions in Syria or otherwise providing support for terrorism in the region.

Assassination:

Soleimani was assassinated on 3 January 2020 around 1:00 a.m. local time (22:00 UTC 2 January), by a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport. BBC News, NBC News, DW News, Time, The Guardian and other media outlets have said Soleimani was assassinated or described the killing as an assassination. Senior officials of the U.S. Department of State compared it to Operation Vengeance in World War II, when American pilots shot down the plane carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto – a comparison concurred with by The New York Times and other prominent media and pundits.

Soleimani was on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and had just left his plane, which arrived in Iraq from Lebanon or Syria. Adil Abdul Mahdi said Soleimani was bringing Iran’s response to a letter that Iraq had sent out on behalf of Saudi Arabia in order to ease tensions between the two countries in the region. The prime minister did not reveal the message’s exact content. Also assassinated were four members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi military commander who headed the PMF. Soleimani’s body was identified using a ring he wore on his finger.

Soleimani was posthumously promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and praised as a martyr by speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani and Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the IRGC. Soleimani was succeeded by Esmail Ghaani as commander of the Quds Force.

According to the Iranian Students News Agency quoting the Iraqi Al-Ahd network, there are diverse narratives concerning the drones which assassinated Qasim-Soleimani (and Abu-Mahdi al-Muhandis). A narrative mentions about the American drones which took-off from Kuwait land, and entered Iraq and did the mentioned operation, on the other hand, the headquarters of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces denied the news after a few hours. The second news says that an American UAV rises from the Al-Adeed base in Qatar and do the mentioned assassination-operation. Also, according to Ahmed al-Asadi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament: “The drones which carried out the assassination-operation, were 3 American UAVs that took-off from the military-base of “Ain al-Assad” and flew in the sky of Baghdad for 20 hours on Thursday morning and then came back directly to the “Ain al-Assad” base after carrying out the assassination operation.” According to Radio-Farda quoting American-media, the drones which did the assassination were from the type of “MQ-9 Reaper”.

Born: 11 March 1957;

Place of Birth: Qom, Iran;

Died: 02 January 2020 (by US air strike in Baghdad, Iraq);

Gender: Male;

Nationality: Iranian;

Passport: 1999 Diplomatic Passport 008827 (Iran);

Known also as: Ghasem Soleymani; Qasmi Sulayman; Qasem Soleymani; Qasem Solaimani; Qasem Salimani; Qasem Solemani; Qasem Sulaimani; Qasem Sulemani; Persian: قاسم سلیمانی).

Soleimani was an Iranian Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and since 1998 commander of its Quds Force – a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations.

Following Soleimani’s death, his deputy Esmail Ghaani became his successor.

Activities:

On November 13, 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.

The IRGC-QF is the Government of Iran’s primary foreign action arm for executing its policy of supporting terrorist organizations and extremist groups around the world.

The IRGC-QF provides training, logistical assistance and material and financial support to militants and terrorist operatives, including the Taliban, Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.