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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sinister-genius-of-qassem-soleimani-11578681560

ESSAY

The Sinister Genius of Qassem Soleimani

The Iranian commander harnessed both Shiite extremists and Sunni radicals, even as he built a ‘foreign
legion’ to project Iran’s power

Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Tehran, May 11, 2014. PHOTO: SIPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Karim Sadjadpour
Jan. 10, 2020 1:39 pm ET

In 2003, in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Iranian regime was ridden with
anxiety. President George W. Bush had included Iran in his post-9/11 “axis of evil” in a famous
2002 speech. I interviewed many Iranian officials at the time as a Tehran-based analyst with
the International Crisis Group, and I vividly remember their fear that the U.S. might turn next
to Tehran.

In those anxious days, Gen. Qassem Soleimani —the powerful commander of Iran’s Quds Force,
who was killed this week by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad—performed an act of unsettling
geopolitical genius that still echoes today.

After the U.S. military campaign to topple the Taliban began, Iran detained hundreds of al
Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan, including some members of Osama bin Laden’s family and
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the future leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. Many Iranians saw these jihadists
as a threat—Sunni zealots who hated overwhelmingly Shiite Iran. Yet Soleimani, the architect
of the Islamic Republic’s plans for regional dominance, realized that they could also be an asset.

In their book “The Exile,” investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy describe
the journey of many al Qaeda members who spent months and even years as “guests” of Iran.
Soleimani broke bread with bin Laden’s sons, who affectionately called him Hajji Qassem, Ms.
Scott-Clark and Mr. Levy write. He appointed two senior Quds Force officers to “provide the
guests with whatever they needed,” including refrigerators, widescreen TVs and an “unlimited
budget” to furnish a religious library. Saif al-Adel, a notorious al Qaeda explosives expert, had
access to a sports complex in a posh Tehran neighborhood, where he swam laps alongside
Western diplomats.

If the U.S.-led Iraq war was intended, in part, to cow Iran by establishing a strong U.S. military
presence in Iraq and to create a flourishing Shiite democracy to undermine the legitimacy of
the Islamic Republic next door, Iran would do everything it could to ensure that America’s
experiment turned into a smoldering failure. Before the war began in March 2003, Soleimani’s
Quds Force freed many of the Sunni jihadists that Iran had been holding captive, unleashing
them against the U.S.

Iraqis dig through the rubble after a car bomb placed by Sunni militants exploded next to the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, killing
more than 85, Aug. 29, 2003. PHOTO: DAVID GUTTENFELDER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

That August, Zarqawi and his forces conducted three deadly bombings in Iraq—against U.N.
headquarters and the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad and a major Shiite shrine in Najaf, a
southern Iraqi city holy to Shiites. These blows devastated the U.S.-led war from the beginning.
By targeting Shiite shrines and civilians, killing thousands of Iran’s fellow Shiites, Zarqawi
helped to radicalize Iraq’s Shiite majority and pushed them closer to Iran—and to Soleimani,
who could offer them protection. Just months after the U.S. invasion, the debate in Washington
had shifted sharply: Instead of asking how a triumphant U.S. could help Iraq to shape Iran, the
question became how an embattled U.S. could stop Iran from shaping Iraq.

Under Soleimani’s command, Iran became the only country in the region capable of harnessing
both Shiite extremism and, at times, Sunni radicalism too. His sinister genius in bridging
sectarian divides has given Iran an enormous asymmetric advantage over its great Sunni Arab
rival in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia. All Shiite extremists are willing to fight for Iran, while most
Sunni extremists—including al Qaeda and Islamic State—want to overthrow Saudi Arabia,
which they see as a corrupt, impious agent of the West.

Soleimani conceived of using Sunni jihadists to fight the U.S. in much the same way that the U.S.
used Sunni jihadists to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Iran’s Shiite
theocracy has managed, at times, to cooperate tactically with deadly Sunni extremist groups—
including the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad—against their common foes, the U.S. and Israel, even as Iran has been fighting on the
front lines against the Sunni fanatics of Islamic State.

During the Obama administration, Gen. Stanley McChrystal criticized Tehran for providing
weapons and training inside Iran to Taliban insurgents targeting U.S. troops. In 2018, Israel’s
top general, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, said that Iran had increased its funding in the Gaza Strip for
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to $100 million a year.

Perhaps no
Soleimani ‘has the blood of well over 600 U.S. and coalition soldiers on his hands.’ American military
—former Gen. David Petraeus commander knew
Soleimani better
than former Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq at the height of the war’s
fury, much of which was inflicted by Soleimani. Gen. Petraeus considered Soleimani “a
combination of CIA director, JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] commander and
regional envoy.” Soleimani “has the blood of well over 600 U.S. and coalition soldiers on his
hands, and the blood of countless others as well, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and
Afghanistan—in each of which he supported, funded, trained, equipped and often directed
powerful Shiite militias,” Gen. Petraeus told me this week.

This highlights another of Soleimani’s hugely important legacies. He also cultivated a 50,000-
strong Shiite foreign legion—based on the model of Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite militia that
is Iran’s proxy and cat’s-paw in Lebanon—to fill power vacuums in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and
Yemen and to threaten the ruling establishments in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf
countries.

With Soleimani leading the charge, these Shiite militias helped to preserve the rule of Syria’s
brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, who remains Iran’s key Arab ally. At a time of great economic
hardship in Iran, Tehran provided billions of dollars to arm, train and pay tens of thousands of
Arab, Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militants—a force that helped Mr. Assad to crush the Syrian
opposition and the Sunni Islamist rebels who rose up to defy his rule.

These achievements made the soft-spoken, diminutive Soleimani a commanding figure in

Tehran. An Iranian adage holds that if you look closely at the manicured hands of the country’s
ruling clerics—especially the hard-liners romanticizing martyrdom and calling for the
destruction of Israel and the West—you will see that most of them have never known manual
labor, let alone war. Not Soleimani. He didn’t need to breathe rhetorical fire; his entire career
had been drenched in blood, and everyone knew it.

Ali Alfoneh, a Danish-Iranian scholar who is an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a
critic of the Islamic Republic, studied Soleimani for more than a decade and developed a
grudging admiration for his personal bravery. During the vicious 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Mr.
Alfoneh told me, “Soleimani was a commander who personally went on reconnaissance
missions behind enemy lines prior to each attack, kissed each man under his command before
the attack and prayed to be martyred.”

One senior Iraqi official who used to meet frequently with Soleimani had a less flattering view,
likening the general to a mob boss whose conspicuous civility was punctuated with subtle yet
clear demands and threats. “Remember that radical group who we helped you eradicate?” the
Iraqi official said with a smile, mimicking Soleimani. “It would be a real shame if they came
back.”

Iranian officials now say that

THE DEATH OF QASSEM SOLEIMANI their revenge for Soleimani’s
killing will be to drive the U.S.
• U.S. Strike Ordered by Trump Kills Key Iranian Military Leader in Baghdad
from Iraq. But Iraqi leaders may
• U.S., Allies Believe Ukraine Plane Was Shot Down by Iran
not prove to be grateful. A
• How the U.S.’s Messaging Has Changed on the Soleimani Intelligence former U.S. military intelligence
officer who served in Iraq told
me, “No one in Iraq will say it
publicly, at least not yet, but most Iraqi politicians hated Soleimani. They resented his heavy-
handedness, his instructions of what to do and what not to do. They feared his constantly
implied threat that he’d have them fired or even assassinated if they didn’t toe the line.”

The U.S. officer added, “How many times did he fly into Baghdad or Najaf or Sulaymaniyah to
tell Iraqis they weren’t allowed to do what’s in their national interest, or weren’t allowed to be
prime minister or interior minister, or arm one faction of Iraqis against another faction of
Iraqis? They’re all saying privately: good riddance.”
—Mr. Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
Washington, D.C.

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