Qasem Soleimani

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Qassem Soleimani

Qasem Soleimani (Persian: قاسم سلیمانی, born 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. Soleimani was significantly involved in the build up the military capacity of Lebanon's Hezbollah, shaping the post-war political landscape in Iraq, and turning around the Syrian civil war. He was the director of the Iranians who assisted Americans in the initial phase of Afghanistan War through secret meetings with Ryan Crocker. 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.

Quotes[edit]

  • One type of paradise that is portrayed for mankind is streams, beautiful nymphs and greeneries. But there is another kind of paradise. ... The warfront was the lost paradise of the human beings, indeed.
  • Dear General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.
  • We’re not like the Americans. We don’t abandon our friends.
  • I entered the [Iran-Iraq] war on a fifteen-day mission, and ended up staying until the end. … We were all young and wanted to serve the revolution.

Quotes about Qasem Soleimani[edit]

[A]n enemy both hated and admired.
He is simple when you talk to him.
Soleimani's shoe worth more than Trump's head.
[T]he external threat of extrajudicial US acts in the region has united Iranians - in both the elite as well as on the street - like never before.
  • Well, the first thing they’re lying about, as a military professional, I know cold. No general, especially not one at the level that Soleimani was operating — no general reaches out and kills someone. Nor does he reach out to a team and say, “Kill someone.” Nor does he reach out to a squad or a platoon or a company and say, “Kill someone.” He gives orders at the top, sets strategic purposes and principles and general guidelines, and he boosts morale, and he travels around, and he talks to the teams and so on — exactly what Soleimani was so good at.
    So, to say that Soleimani, himself personally, was an imminent threat is, as I said before, laughable.
  • We have just, as we did with torture from 2002 to 2007, 2008, as we substantiated for the world that torture was OK, we have now OK’d the killing of recognized members of other states’ government. That’s what Soleimani was, no matter how heinous we may paint him... We have become the law of the jungle, rather than, as we have been since 1945, the greatest supporter of international law and the rule of law in general across the face of the globe. With torture and with killing other state recognized individuals of their government, we have become the tiger, the lion, the bear, the alligator in that jungle. It’s not a very, very good precedent to have set, as the Russians indicated. The Chinese have said similar things. It’s a terrible precedent to have set.
  • General Soleimani was not just the commander of al-Quds military forces. Far more accurately he should be considered the number two figure of importance in the entire Iranian ruling structure, and perhaps the most popular political/military figure in Iran...His strategy, tactics and policies ran circles around the leaden and ill-conceived policies and leaders of the US war in Iraq—still ongoing 17 years later... The trembling puffery and outrage on the part of most politicians and commentators in the US that “Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of any number of American soldiers in Iraq” reflects either childish naivete or massive self-delusion... This latest act of “foreign policy by assassination” will be largely rejected by most in the world. Only a few craven Gulf kings and princes—and Israel—will applaud it...
  • Suleimani is the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today … and no one’s ever heard of him.
  • The whole operation [of Al-Qusayr] was orchestrated by Suleimani. … It was a great victory for him.
  • He is so short, but he has this presence. … There will be ten people in a room, and when Suleimani walks in he doesn’t come and sit with you. He sits over there on the other side of room, by himself, in a very quiet way. Doesn’t speak, doesn’t comment, just sits and listens. And so of course everyone is thinking only about him.
  • He has ties to every corner of the system. … He is what I call politically clever. He has a relationship with everyone.
  • … softly spoken and reasonable, very polite. … He is simple when you talk to him. You would not know how powerful he is without knowing his background. His power is absolute and no one can challenge this.

External links[edit]

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