Qasem Soleimani
Iranian major general
Died when: 62 years 298 days (753 months)Star Sign: Pisces
Qasem Soleimani (Persian: ???? ???????, pronounced [????sem solej'm??ni?]; 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 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.
As a civilian, Soleimani initially worked in construction before joining the IRGC during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.He assembled and led a company of soldiers when the Iran–Iraq War began in September 1980, eventually rising through the ranks to become the commander of the 41st Tharallah Division in his 20s.
He was later involved in extraterritorial operations, and in the late 1990s became commander of the IRGC Quds Force.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 Government of Syria 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 of Iraq and the Levant in 2014, Soleimani coordinated and assisted Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia militia forces in Iraq.
He masterminded Iran's intervention in Iraq and had a significant role in Iran's fight against ISIL.Soleimani was amongst the most popular personalities in Iran, viewed by many as a "selfless hero fighting Iran's enemies", by others as a "murderer".
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 in a targeted American drone strike on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq, on the orders of U.S.
President Donald Trump.The strike was strongly condemned by some, including the Iranian government, and a mass multi-city funeral was held in both Iraq and Iran for Soleimani and other casualties caused by the drone strike.
Hours after his burial on 7 January 2020, the Iranian military launched missiles against U.S. military bases in Iraq; while there were no deaths in the second attack, the Pentagon reported that 110 American troops were wounded in the strikes.
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