He is a key figure in Iranian politics. The powerful General Qassem Soleimani killed on Friday January 3 in an American raid in Baghdad, was the head of the Al Quds Revolutionary Guard Force, in charge of the external operations of the Islamic Republic. This charismatic figure has notably exerted a key influence in political negotiations since 2018 with a view to forming a government in Iraq.
At 62, he has also become in recent years a real star in Iran with very many followers on his Instagram account.
The Iranian general played an important role in the fight against the jihadist forces. He became the key man of Iranian influence in the Middle East, where he strengthened the diplomatic weight of Tehran, especially in Iraq and Syria, two countries where the United States is engaged militarily.
"For Shiites in the Middle East, it's a mix of James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga," wrote former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in his portrait of Qassem Soleimani for the American magazine Time. 100 most influential people in the world in 2017.
"For the West, it is (...) responsible for having exported the Islamic Revolution from Iran, for supporting the terrorists (...) for waging Iran's wars abroad", adds -t it.
In Iran, plunged into the economic slump, some had suggested to him to launch out on the local political scene. But the Iranian general had insisted on rejecting rumors that he could have run in the 2021 presidential election.
Key man in Iraq
The high-ranking deployed his talents in particular in neighboring Iraq. With each political or military development in this country, he made the trip, to act behind the scenes and, above all, upstream.
Breakthrough of the Islamic State (IS) group, independence referendum in Kurdistan or today the formation of a government ... Each time, he met the different Iraqi parties and defined the line to be held, say various sources who have attended these meetings, always held in the greatest secrecy.
His influence was ancient since he already led the Al Quds Force when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
"My Iranian interlocutors were very clear on the fact that even if they informed the Foreign Ministry, in the end it was General Soleimani who would take the decisions", confided in BBC Ryan Crocker, a former American Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq.
After being behind the scenes for decades, Qassem Soleimani began to make the headlines after the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, where Iran, the Shiite heavyweight of the region, provides precious help to the Bashar regime Assad.
A popular figure
This high commander of the Guardians of the Revolution, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, had also said to have spent in Lebanon - with Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah - the main part of the Israeli-Lebanese conflict of summer 2006, in an exclusive interview broadcast by Iranian state television last October.
According to a study published in 2018 by IranPoll and the University of Maryland, 83% of Iranians polled had a favorable opinion of the general, ranked in front of President Hassan Rohani and the head of diplomacy Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Abroad, certain Western leaders see him as a central figure in Tehran's relations with groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
With AFP
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