Qasem Soleimani (Persian: قاسم سلیمانی, romanized: Qâsem Soleymâni; 11 March 1957[note 1] – 3 January 2020) was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian Civil War through securing Russian intervention.

[33][40][41] When not at work, he spent his time with weight training in local gyms, or attending the sermons of Hojjat Kamyab, a preacher and a protégé of Ali Khamenei, who according to Soleimani encouraged him to "revolutionary activities".

[1] According to the American government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the IRGC-managed Fars News Agency reported in January 2020 that Soleimani and the Quds Force were involved in many foreign conflicts including "pressuring occupiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to leave the region" and suppressing Syrian street protests against Bashar al-Assad.

While the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yahya Rahim Safavi, advocated for an Iranian invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime, Soleimani convinced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that a policy of "strategic patience" would be more fruitful.

[69] Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, senior U.S. State Department official Ryan Crocker flew to Geneva to meet with Iranian diplomats who were under the leadership of Soleimani with the purpose of collaborating to destroy the Taliban.

[2] On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah, under the operational command of Imad Mughniyeh and Khalid Bazzi, launched a cross-border raid into Israel, killing three IDF soldiers and taking two hostages.

According to a Middle Eastern security official Dexter Filkins talked to, thousands of Quds Force and Iraqi Shia militiamen in Syria were "spread out across the entire country".

[1] Brigadier General Hossein Hamadani, the Basij's former deputy commander, helped to run irregular militias that Soleimani hoped would continue the fight if Assad fell.

[82] In 2015, Soleimani began gathering support from various sources to combat the newly resurgent Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and rebel groups which had both successfully taken large swaths of territory from Assad's forces.

[83][84] According to Reuters, at a meeting in Moscow in July, Soleimani unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory—with Russia's help.

[84] Soleimani had a decisive impact on the theater of operations, which led to a strong advance in southern Aleppo with the government and allied forces re-capturing two military bases and dozens of towns and villages in a matter of weeks.

[100] The Los Angeles Times reported that Amirli was the first town to successfully withstand an ISIL invasion, and was secured thanks to "an unusual partnership of Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers, Iranian-backed Shia militias and U.S.

They wrote "Dear Mr. Khatami, how long do we have to shed tears, sorrow over the events, practice democracy by chaos and insults, and have revolutionary patience at the expense of sabotaging the system?

[115] In the summer of 2018, Soleimani and Tehran exchanged public remarks with American President Donald Trump related to Red Sea shipping which heightened tensions between the two countries and their allies in the region.

[120] On 24 June 2011, the Official Journal of the European Union said the three Iranian Revolutionary Guard members now subject to sanctions had been "providing equipment and support to help the Syrian government suppress protests in Syria".

These efforts included using state-run TV channels and several social media accounts, a large proportion of which had newly been created, and posting images such as heroic, "noble warrior" depictions of Soleimani, appealing to both nationalists and religious conservatives.

[10][152][153][154][155] Senior officials of the U.S. Department of State compared it to Operation Vengeance in World War II, when American pilots shot down the plane carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto[156] – a comparison concurred with by The New York Times[157] and other prominent media and pundits.

[161][162] Adil Abdul Mahdi said Soleimani was bringing Iran's response to a letter that Iraq had sent out on behalf of Saudi Arabia in order to ease tensions between the two countries in the region.

[165] Soleimani was posthumously promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General[10] and praised as a martyr by speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani[166] and Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the IRGC.

[176] Anonymous officials told The New York Times that Trump had initially decided to strike at the Shia militia, but instead chose the most extreme option proposed (killing Soleimani) after seeing television footage of the attack on the embassy.

To suggest that 18 years later this authorization could justify killing an Iranian official stretches the law far beyond anything Congress ever intended," adding that he "looked forward" to Pompeo testifying in a 28 February hearing.

[187] The Trump administration's February 2020 memorandum to Congress was "remarkably vague and inconsequential as far as a possible imminent threat is concerned," Ms. Callamard wrote in the report.

The world now faced "the very real prospect that states may opt to 'strategically' eliminate high-ranking military officials outside the context of a 'known' war, and seek to justify the killing on the grounds of the target's classification as a 'terrorist' who posed a potential future threat," Callamard said in her report.

[189] Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Medea Benjamin (the founder of anti-war advocacy group Code Pink) and Hillary Mann Leverett (a political risk consultant and former director of Iran affairs at the White House's National Security Council) called the assassination of Soleimani "flatly illegal".

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, led the traditional Islamic prayer for the dead, weeping at one point in front of the flag-draped coffins.

The next day, the Iranian military responded to Soleimani's death by launching ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq,[225][226] resulting in no reported casualties but 110 traumatic brain injuries.

[240] There have been held commemoration ceremonies by the name of "Commemoration-Ceremony (Anniversary) of Martyr Qassem-Soleimani" (and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis) in presence and virtually (via web conferencing) in the cities of the Islamic Republic of Iran[241][242][243] and several countries, such as Oman, Iraq, Syria and Portugal.

[244][245][246][247][248][249] According to Fars News Agency, the anniversary of the commemoration of Qasem Soleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and their colleagues was held with the presence of local and foreign officials in University of Tehran, Iran.

[252][253] On 3 January 2025, the Iranian government held a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of "national hero" Qasem Soleimani, who Iran claimed played a key role in "defeating terrorism" abroad.