Who was Ghassem Soleimani?
For the Shiites in the Middle East, he was "a mixture of James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga", a CIA expert once said about the killed Soleimani. He was in the crosshairs more than once. In 2020, he was killed on the orders of US President Trump.
For many Iranians, Ghassem Soleimani was a hero, for the USA he was one of its greatest enemies. On the night of January 3, 2020, the US used a drone to kill the leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite unit for foreign missions, at Baghdad airport.
Two weeks after the targeted killing, then-US President Donald Trump gave a colorful recounting of the US drone strike, as CNN reported on a dinner with campaign donors at his Mar-a-Lago estate. "They said, 'Sir, you know, and this is from cameras that are miles in the sky. They're together, sir, sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. Seriously. They've got two minutes and eleven seconds to live, sir, they're in the car. They're in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have about a minute to live, sir. 30 seconds, ten, nine, eight ... then all of a sudden boom. They're gone, sir."
Trump also commented on his motives for ordering the killing of Soleimani: "He said bad things about our country." According to the report, Soleimani threatened to attack the USA and kill US citizens.
On the way to becoming a political star in Iran
The general with the full gray beard had become a political star in Iran in the preceding years. In a 2018 poll classified as reliable, he received 83% approval - more than President Hassan Ruhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Sarif. He denied rumors that he wanted to run for president in 2021. According to the BBC, it was assumed that he came from a poor background and had received comparatively little formal education. His rise was closely linked to the Revolutionary Guards.
"For the Shiites in the Middle East, he is a mixture of James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga," is how former CIA expert Kenneth Pollack described the general. In Iran, he had a huge number of followers on Instagram. In 2017, the US magazine "Time" listed Soleimani as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. "The West sees him as responsible for exporting the Islamic Revolution in Iran, supporting terrorists and Iran's wars abroad."
His friends and enemies alike saw him as a mastermind who expanded Iran's influence in Iraq, Syria and beyond. According to Western experts, Soleimani was also responsible for Tehran's close relations with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and the Palestinian Hamas.
"He just sits there and listens"
Soleimani had considerable influence in the Syrian conflict. His visit to Moscow in the summer of 2015 was the first step in the plans for Russian military intervention, which led to the turning point in the civil war and the new Russian-Iranian alliance in support of Assad. His actions repeatedly put Soleimani in the sights of his opponents. The US government imposed sanctions on him.
The 62-year-old's power goes back many years. He was already at the head of the Al-Kuds Brigades when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. "My Iranian contacts for Afghanistan made it clear to me that although they informed the State Department, in the end it was General Soleimani who made the decisions," former US ambassador Ryan Crocker told the British broadcaster BBC in 2013.
A senior Iranian representative described Soleimani in the New Yorker magazine as very reserved: "He sits at the other end of the room, alone and very quiet. He doesn't speak, he doesn't comment, he just sits and listens." After decades of operating behind the scenes, Soleimani filled the front pages of Iranian newspapers when the Syrian war began in 2011. Photos showed him at the front, he appeared in documentaries and even in a cartoon and a music video.
"They will start the war, but we will end it"
Most recently, he had tried to exert Iranian influence in Iraq in particular. He followed every political and military development in the neighboring country on the ground - be it the Kurdish independence referendum or the formation of a new government in Baghdad. He always held secret talks with all groups and parties, as confirmed by several people involved.
When the US declared the Al-Quds Brigades a foreign terrorist organization in 2019 in order to force Iran to negotiate a more limited nuclear and missile programme, Soleimani's response was succinct: any negotiation with the US would be tantamount to "complete surrender".
Soleimani had already challenged US President Donald Trump in a video published online in 2018. "I'm telling you, Mr. Trump, the player. I'm telling you, you should know that we're right where you don't think we could be." At this, Soleimani threatened with his index finger. "You will start the war, but we will end it."
Israeli military officials also publicly discussed the possibility of targeting him on several occasions. And Saudi Arabian intelligence considered an assassination attempt on Soleimani as early as 2017, according to a Times report. The deadly US attack drove tens of thousands of Iranians onto the streets after Friday prayers in Tehran and in Soleimani's hometown of Kerman. They chanted "Death to America!" and showed pictures of the dead man.
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In 2020, the US President at the time, Donald Trump, ordered the targeted killing of Ghassem Soleimani, the leader of the Al-Quds Brigades, at Baghdad airport. Two weeks after the attack, Trump recounted the drone strike to campaign donors, detailing the two minutes and eleven seconds Soleimani had before the strike.
The killing of Soleimani on orders from President Trump was a significant event for Iran, as Soleimani was seen as a hero by many Iranians and a great enemy by the USA.
Source: www.ntv.de
