Soleimani was a shadowy figure who commanded Iran’s proxy forces

RUMOURS of his death have circulated many times before, but this time it has been confirmed that Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, was killed early yesterday morning in a US air strike near Baghdad airport.

The 62-year-old headed the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds force and for the West, was a shadowy figure commanding Iran’s proxy forces, responsible for fighters in Syria backing President Bashar Assad and for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.

He survived the lengthy Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s to take control of the Quds, who were responsible for the Islamic Republic’s foreign campaigns.

Soleimani was virtually unknown in Iran until the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, when his popularity grew after the US called for his death.

When his death finally came 17 years later, he was the most recognisable battlefield commander in Iran, who had ignored calls to enter politics but probably became more powerful than its civilian leadership.

Soleimani appeared to love his job, saying in a 2009 interview: “The warfront is mankind’s lost paradise.

“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.”

WHO ORDERED HIS KILLING?

WHO else but Donald Trump? The Pentagon said the president ordered “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad” by killing the man once referred to by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “living martyr of the revolution”.

Among the previous rumours of his death were a plane crash in 2006 that killed other military officials in north-western Iran and a 2012 bombing in Damascus that killed top Assad aides.

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Hessameddin Ashena, an adviser to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, wrote on the social media app Telegram: “Trump through his gamble has dragged the US into the most dangerous situation in the region.

“Whoever put his foot beyond the red line should be ready to face its consequences.”

WHAT WAS HIS BACKGROUND?

According to the US State Department, Soleimani was born in the Iranian religious capital of Qom and, although little is known about his childhood, Iranian accounts suggest his father was a peasant who received a piece of land under the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

At the age of 13, he worked in construction, then for the Kerman Water Organisation. When the 1979 Islamic Revolution swept the shah from power, Soleimani joined the Revolutionary Guard, where he deployed to Iran’s north west with forces that put down Kurdish unrest following the revolution.

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Soon afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and their bloody eight-year war saw more than a million people killed. During this time, Soleimani became known for his opposition to “meaningless deaths” on the battlefield, but still wept with fervour when exhorting his men into combat.

After that war he disappeared from public view for several years, probably because of his wartime disagreements with Hashemi Rafsanjani, who would serve as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997.

However, after Rafsanjani, Soleimani became head of the Quds and grew so close to Ali Khamenei that the Supreme Leader officiated his daughter’s wedding.