Qassem Soleimani- Iranian General Who Redrew the Middle East Map

Tehran: For Iranians whose icons since the Islamic Revolution have been stern-faced clergy, Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani widely represented a figure of national resilience in the face of four decades of United States pressure.

For the US and Israel, he was a shadowy figure in command of Iran's proxy forces from Iraq to Lebanon to Syria.

A poor farm boy who had to work to support his family as a teenager, the late Soleimani rose through the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards to acquire power that outstripped even the president's.

A survey published in 2018 by IranPoll and the University of Maryland--one of the few considered reliable by analysts--found Soleimani had a popularity rating of 83 percent, beating President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. 

Solemani survived the horror of Iran's long war in the 1980s with Iraq to take control of the Revolutionary Guards elite Quds Force, responsible for the Islamic Republic's foreign campaigns.

But for all the power he accumulated, Qassem Soleimani's origins were humble.

The Guardian reports, citing his autobiography, that he was from "poor farming family" and was "forced to travel to a neighbouring city at age 13 and work to pay his father's debts".

Now, all these decades later, a worried world contemplates the fallout from a one-time humble farm boy's killing.

A US airstrike killed Soleimani, 62, and others as they traveled from Baghdad's international airport early Friday morning. The Pentagon said President Donald Trump ordered the US military to take decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing a man once referred to by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a living martyr of the revolution.

Soleimani's luck ran out after being rumored dead several times in his life. Those incidents included a 2006 airplane crash that killed other military officials in northwestern Iran and a 2012 bombing in Damascus that killed top aides of Assad.

More recently, rumors circulated in Nov 2015 that Soleimani was killed or seriously wounded leading Syrian forces as they fought around last rebel stronghold Aleppo.

Iranian officials quickly vowed to take revenge amid months of tensions between Iran and the US following Trump pulling out of Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers. While Soleimani was the Guard's most prominent general, many others in its ranks have experience in waging the asymmetrical, proxy attacks for which Iran has become known.

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

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

Born on March 11, 1957, Soleimani was said in his homeland to have grown up near the mountainous and the historic Iranian town of Rabor, famous for its forests, its apricot, walnut and peach harvests and its brave soldiers. The US State Department has said he was born in the Iranian religious capital of Qom.

Little is known about his childhood, though Iranian accounts suggest Soleimani's father was a peasant.

When 1979 Islamic Revolution swept the Shah from power Soleimani joined the Revolutionary Guard in its wake.

He was deployed to Iran's northwest with forces that put down Kurdish unrest following the revolution.

Soon after, Iraq invaded Iran with US backing that led the two countries to a long and bloody eight-year war. The fighting killed more than 1 million people and saw Iran send waves of lightly armed troops into minefields and the fire of Iraqi forces, including teenage soldiers. Solemanis unit and others came under attack by Iraqi chemical weapons as well.

Amid the carnage, Soleimani became known for his opposition to meaningless deaths on the battlefield, while still weeping at times with fervor when exhorting his men into combat, embracing each individually.

As chief of the Quds Force, Solemani oversaw the Guards foreign operations and soon would come to the attention of Americans following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

In a rare interview aired on Iranian state television in October this year, Soleimani said he was in Lebanon during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war to oversee the conflict. 

In 2018, Soleimani was seen in a video clip warning the US president: "I'm telling you Mr Trump the gambler, I'm telling you, know that we are close to you in that place you don't think we are. You will start the war but we will end it."

"For the resistance axis in the Middle East, he is James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga rolled into one," wrote former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in a profile for Time's 100 most influential people in 2017. "To the West, he is... responsible for exporting Iran's Islamic revolution, supporting terrorists, subverting pro-Western governments and waging Iran's foreign wars," Pollack added.

Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker noted that his power comes mostly from his close relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei, the guiding force for Iranian society, and that in a fractious Iranian foreign policy power corridors--including Revolutionary Guard commanders, senior clerics, and foreign ministry officials--he was tied to every corner of the system. "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," a senior Iraqi official told Filkins.

In a 2010 speech, US Gen David Petreaus recounted a message from Soleimani he said explained the scope of his powers.

"He said, Gen Petreaus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan," Petraeus said.

The US and the United Nations put Soleimani on a sanctions lists in 2007, though his travels continued. 

But his stature would arise from the rapid expansion of Daesh or the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Iran sent Soleimani into Syria to prevent fall of Damascus and he led Iraqis to stop Daesh advance towards Baghdad. In Iraq while a US-led coalition confined itself to airstrikes, ground victories for Iraqi forces came with photographs emerging of Soleimani leading, never wearing a flak jacket.

"The warfront is mankind's lost paradise," Soleimani recounted in a 2009 interview. "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."

"Soleimani has taught us that death is the beginning of life, not the end of life," one Iraqi militia commander said.