Ghassem Soleimani has been expressing his disgust at the prospect of a peaceful death at his home in Tehran for the past forty years since he has been waging war in the region. One of the most powerful men in the Middle East, a two-star Iranian general, head of Tehran's foreign operations in the Al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, was shot dead on the ground in his first conflict, in Iraq. He died at 62, burned in an American strike near Baghdad airport on the night of Friday, January 3.
"The battlefield is the lost paradise of mankind. The paradise where the virtue and the acts of the men are at the highest ”, he launched again in 2009, in front of a television camera. Through violence, patience and a keen political sense, this executor of Iranian power has largely contributed to reshaping the Middle East, cementing Iran’s axis of influence from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.
Ghassem Soleimani is the son of a poor peasant from the Kerman mountains in southern Iran. From the age of 13, he was a worker on the construction sites of the provincial capital. Small and well-built, passionate about bodybuilding and pious, he wears elephant’s pants and pie crust collars. A year after the 1979 revolution, the aggression of the young Islamic Republic, ordered by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, precipitated him into war. He will never get out again.
Resistance networks
Ghassem Soleimani joins a newly created body of volunteers, which brings together nationalists, thugs and religious: the guardians of the revolution. He distinguished himself behind enemy lines, leading commando reconnaissance missions. This war, which will last eight years and will kill 500,000 dead on both sides, teaches him the contempt of the West, which supports the military Saddam Hussein against the Islamic Republic. At the end of the conflict, Soleimani took charge of the guards in his native region, then on the Afghan border. He was given the leadership of the Al-Quds Force in the late 1990s, shortly after the Taliban took power in Kabul.
Their fundamentalist Sunni regime is a threat to Tehran. Against them, Soleimani supports resistance networks in the country, but his salvation will come from an unexpected ally. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States is preparing to invade Afghanistan. In pragmatics, the general dares to plead for a collaboration with Washington, before the Supreme Iranian National Security Council. He wants to help the "great Satan" to overthrow the Taliban. In the fall, his envoys send maps of Afghanistan, Taliban military position statements and even proposed plans of attack to senior US diplomats at a Geneva hotel.
