The United States president said that the killing of General Soleimani was to stop a war and not to start one. President Trump further said that the reign of terror in the region was over following the death of senior Iranian military official.The 62 year old commander of AL Quds force was considered as the second most powerful man after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After the airstrike Iran’s supreme leader said, “His departure to God does not end his path or his mission, but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands.”
General Soleimani was the product of Iranian revolution and joined it in 1979 as a soldier. His vital role in the gulf war between Iran and Iraq helped him to quickly climb the ranks of revolutionary corps, and in the later years of the war commanded the division against enemy forces. His fearlessness and strategic triumphs during the Gulf war were admired by friends and foes alike.
In 1998 General Haji Qasim, as the Iranians used to call him, was appointed as the commander of notorious al Quds force or the Jerusalem’s army.He drastically expanded the extraterritorial operations of the organization and within few years became the face of Iranian foreign policy in the region. General Soleimani, soon after taking the command strengthened ties with Hasan Nasrullah, Hezbollah’s leader.
He was among the most powerful men in Iran, andthe influence he enjoyed can be imagined from the letter he sent to than Iranian president Mohammad Khatami in the wake of student protests, in which he stated, “Dear Mr. Khatami, how long do we have to shed tears, sorrow over the events, and practice democracy by chaos and insults, and have revolutionary patience at the expense of sabotaging the system? Dear president, if you don’t make a revolutionary decision and act according to your Islamic and national missions, tomorrow will be so late and irrecoverable that cannot be even imagined.”
In 2001 America invaded Afghanistan and toppled Taliban regime. Al Quds force led by General Soleimani viewed Taliban as a threat, and therefore supported the US troops by providing key information related to Taliban leadership. But things went bad, when American President George W Bush called Iran as axis of evil in the state of the union address. The development infuriated Tehran, primarily General Soleimani and the intelligence ties between Iran and the United States in Afghanistan were halted. Analysts believes that President’s Bush’s speech forced Iran to reevaluate its ties with the Washington.
The General was physically active on all fronts. In an interview to Iranian state television, General Soleimani said that he was present in Lebanon during entire 34 days of war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. General Soleimani was a staunch supporter of a Sunni group Hamas, active in the narrow strip of Gaza. Under his command Al Quds force provided intelligence and logistical support to the Hamas.
The objectives and the mission of the late Soleimani were to neutralize American and Israeli interests in the Middle East and to contain Iran’s arch rival Saudi Arabia.
The toppling of Saddam regime open new opportunities for Iran to increase its influence in Iraq. And General Soleimani the veteran of the gulf war was eager to organize and support Shiite proxies in Iraq. According to General Stanley McChrystal, “In 2007, I watched a string of vehicles pass from Iran into northern Iraq. I had been serving as the head of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for four years, working to stem the terrorism that had devastated the region, and I had become accustomed to making tough choices. But on that January night, the choice was particularly tricky: whether or not to attack a convoy that included QassemSoleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, an organization roughly analogous to a combination of the CIA and JSOC in the United States.There was good reason to eliminate Soleimani. At the time, Iranian-made roadside bombs built and deployed at his command were claiming the lives of U.S. troops across Iraq. But to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately. By the time the convoy had reached Erbil, Soleimani had slipped away into the darkness”.
Soliemani is the architect of Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East, primarily in Yemen, Syria, Qatar, and Iraq. He bolstered Houthis in Yemen by providing them with state of the art weapons. Houthis has directly threatened the sovereignty of the Saudi Arabia and is responsible for several missile attacks inside the Kingdom. Soleimani was also the chief planner and executioner of the battle of Al Qusayr, which shift the tide of the Syrian civil war in favor of Assad regime. Soleimani instructed Hezbollah to send thousands of troops in aid of Assad’s army and the combine operation of Hezbollah, Al Quds, and Syrian Arab Army (SAA) retook the strategic town from Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Al Nusra front.Strategists believes that the successful control of Al Qusayr was not only vital for the survival of the regime but was also instrumental in gaining the territory lost to the rebels in northern parts of the country.
In summation, the objectives and the mission of the late Soleimani were to neutralize American and Israeli interests in the Middle East and to contain Iran’s arch rival Saudi Arabia. According to former CIA analyst Kenneth M. Pollack, “for the Middle Eastern Shiites he is James Bond and Ervin Rommel rolled into one”. They say that no one is indispensable but in case of General Qasim Soleimani the opposite is true.
The author is a Public Policy and International relations scholar and is associated with reputed think tanks.