An influential Iranian general who’s been tied to attacks against US soldiers — and who helped shape the country’s foreign policy decisions since his rise to power in 2002 — was killed Thursday.
Gen. Qassim Soleimani, who headed the elite Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, was blown away after he left his plane at Baghdad Airport.
Soleimani, designated a terrorist by the US in 2005, has been blamed in the past for arming Iraqi insurgents who fought US soldiers during the war with Iraq.
US officials say that under Soleimani, his Quds force taught Iraqi militants how to manufacture and use deadly roadside bombs against American troops after the invasion of Iraq.
“Qassim Soleimani is the one who has been exporting malign[ant] activities throughout the Middle East for some time now,” former US Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told Fox News in August 2015.
“He’s absolutely responsible for killing many Americans. In fact, I would say the last two years I was there the majority of our casualties came from his surrogates, not Sunni or Al Qaeda.”
Soleimani was also linked by the Treasury Department in October 2011 for a failed plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US at a restaurant in Washington, DC.
The general began his ascent to power during the 1979 Iranian revolution that led to the establishment of an Islamic Republic, according to The Guardian.
From there, he ascended the ranks of the Iranian military until 2002, when he was appointed to head the Quds force months before US invaded Iraq.
He wielded enormous power since then, shaping the country’s foreign policy decisions.
“He is the most powerful man in Iraq without question,” Iraq’s former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told the newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat in July 2010. “Nothing gets done without him.”
In July 2014, Soleimani reportedly defied international sanctions and traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. The two countries are allies in Syria, backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against rebels in that country’s ongoing civil war.
Soleimani’s UN Security Council-issued travel ban dated back to 2007, stemming from his alleged role in illicit arms trafficking and smuggling nuclear materials.
With Post wires
