Soleimani joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1979 after the 1979 revolution. Furthermore, he played an active role in the suppression of the Kurdish minority.
QASSEM SOLEIMANI IN THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR
After the Iran-Iraq War, Suleimani trained several battalions of the IRGC in the southern city of Kerman and dispatched them to the southern front. Shortly he was sent to the city of Susangerd as commander of a company. At the beginning of the war, Suleimani commanded one of the brigades of the 41st Division of Kerman. During the war, he was promoted and became commander of the 41 Mechanized Division of the so-called Thar-Allah brigade.
Qassem Soleimani and the monopoly of production and distribution of drugs
Following the regime's cease-fire with Iraq, the IRGC seized a monopoly on drug trafficking under the pretext of "Fighting drug traffickers" to finance its overseas operations. Until his appointment as the head of IRGC the Quds Force in 1997, Ghassem Suleimani was responsible for the production and distribution of narcotics from Afghanistan to countries in the region and Africa, Europe, and the United States.
QASSEM SOLEIMANI'S APPOINTMENT AS HEAD OF THE QUDS FORCE
In mid-1998, Khamenei appointed Qassem Soleimani as commander of the Quds Force. From that date until his death, Qassem Soleimani was the source and the force behind all the chaos and humanitarian crises and terrorism in the Middle East countries and other Asian countries in Africa, America, and Europe. Qassem Soleimani was Khamenei's top commander and directly received his orders from him. He was Khamenei's adviser in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the Supreme Council of the Security Council, Soleimani had the last word on regime's interference in the affairs of countries in the Middle East. In affairs, Soleimani was personally involved in promoting the regime's political influence and terrorist activities in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
Dexter Filkins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, wrote a detailed report on Qassem Soleimani on September 30, 2013, entitled "Shadow Commander."
"Suleimani took command of the Quds Force fifteen years ago, and in that time he has sought to reshape the Middle East in Iran's favor, working as a power broker and as a military force: assassinating rivals, arming allies, and, for most of a decade, directing a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned Soleimani for his role in supporting the Assad regime, and for abetting terrorism," read the report.
Khamenei appointed Esmail Ghaani to replace Qasem Soleimani. According to the Iranian resistance he is among the most criminal commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who for the past 40 years has played the most significant role in the suppression of the Iranian people and the massacres in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other regional countries.Ghaani, born in 1957 in Bojnourd, joined the IRGC since the early days of the establishment of the mullahs' regime. Since 1980, he was sent to the Iranian Kurdistan region to suppress people there.
In subsequent years, he was one of the IRGC commanders during the Iran-Iraq war and sent a large number of youth, teenagers, and students to the killing fields. Khomeini continued that war in order to prolong the survival of his disgraceful rule.
As has been stated in the report by the General Command of the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA) on the Eternal Light Operation, Ghaani fought the freedom fighters as the Commander of the Nasr 5 Division. According to the same report, Soleimani was also involved in the same operation as the Commander of the Sarollah 31 Division. (See the General Command Report, p. 49). They were responsible for killing many of the wounded and prisoners of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in the battlefield.
Following the end of the war, Ghaani spent some time as the Commander of Intelligence in the Kurdistan region, Intelligence Office Chief of the IRGC Joint Command, Commander of the IRGC Air Force, and Deputy Intelligence Chief of the IRGC Joint Command.
In 1987, Ghaani was appointed as the Ansar Corps Commander, which was responsible for operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this capacity, he organized and commanded special IRGC operations in Afghanistan.
During the uprising of thousands of people in Mashhad in 1992, Ghaani played a decisive role in suppressing the protests.
During the Student Uprising in July 1999, Ghaani was one of the signatories of a letter by 24 IRGC commanders to then-regime President Mohammad Khatami, demanding the severe suppression of the students.
Ghaani has been involved in the export of warmongering and terrorism to Iraq. Since April 2014, Ghaani routinely traveled to Iraq to supervise the training and organization of militias. Following the war on the people of al-Anbar by then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Ghaani traveled to Iraq in the four-member delegation of the Qods Force on May 17, 2014. In subsequent months, as stated in the NCRI Secretariat's statement on December 26, 2014, the Commander of the Qods Force " set up a joint Tactical Operations Center in Anbar" with Maliki's army and police forces. Iraj Masjedi and a number of other senior officials of the Qods Force were established in Iraq and Esmail Ghaani Akbarnejad, Qassem Soleimani's Deputy, regularly travelled to Iraq to supervise the situation."
On May 2, 2015, the Security and Counterterrorism Committee of the NCRI wrote in a statement: "On July 12, 2014, speaking to a group of Qods Force commanders, IRGC Brigadier General Esmail Qa’ani, Deputy Qods Force Commander, announced a new phase of operations by Ansarullah in Yemen. He said: With this operation, we will place Saudi Arabia in a vulnerable position. In an interview with state-run TV on May 23, 2014, Ghaani admitted that the Houthi militias were trained by the regime. He said: "The defenders of Yemen were trained under the flag of the Islamic Republic. The enemies cannot confront the Yemeni fighters."
The NCRI Secretariat's May 25, 2015 statement said that the responsibility for the Yemen war in the Quds Force rests with Ghaani, and he has set up meetings with Houthi commanders in Tehran. At that time, a large number of Houthi commanders and officials who were wounded in the Yemen war were being treated at the Imam Reza hospital in the city of Mashhad. The number of the wounded is so large that the hospital is refusing to provide bends to the residents of the city itself. Following treatment, the injured Houthis are sent to the Qasr-e Talai (Golden Palace) Hotel in Imam Reza Street, which is controlled by the IRGC. In its May 2, 2015 statement, the NCRI had also said: "On March 23 (2015), the Qods Force airlifted 52 of the wounded members of the Ansarollah (Houthis) to the IRGC Baqiyatollah Hospital in Tehran. Ghaani personally visited them at the hospital."
Ghaani played an active part in the clerical regime's meddling in Syria and was involved in the massacre of the people of this country. The NCRI Security and Anti-terrorism Committee said in its statement on November 30, 2015, that following the killing of IRGC commander Hossein Hamedani on October 8, 2015, Ghaani assumed command of the war in Aleppo.
Placed on the list of sanctions by the U.S. government, Ghaani has organized a vast network of smuggling in order to supply arms and funds to terrorist proxies in various countries, including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
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The US State Department designated Aas’ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as AAH, one of the Iranian regime’s proxy groups in Iraq, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on Friday Jan 3rd. The US Secretary also declared, his department has designated the AAH’s leaders, brothers Qays and Laith al-Khazali, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).
“AAH and its leaders are violent proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Secretary Pompeo continued, “Acting on behalf of their masters in Tehran, they use violence and terror to further the Iranian regime’s efforts to undermine Iraqi sovereignty.”
The State Department also confirmed, a long-time revelation by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), of the Iranian regime’s funding of terrorist groups in Iraq saying, “AAH is extensively funded and trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, an entity that was part of the IRGC designation as an FTO in April 2019.”
“AAH, led by Qays and Laith al-Khazali, is an Iran-backed, militant organization that has claimed responsibility for more than 6,000 attacks against U.S. and Coalitions forces since its creation in 2006. AAH has carried out highly sophisticated operations, including mortar attacks on an American base, the downing of a British helicopter, and an attack on the Karbala Provincial Headquarters that resulted in the capture and murder of five American soldiers,” read the statement.
“Today’s designations follow an action taken by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on December 6, 2019, to designate Qays and Laith al-Khazali pursuant to E.O. 13818 for their involvement in serious human rights abuses in Iraq, including approving the use of lethal force against protesters for the purpose of public intimidation,” added the statement.
According to the State Department, “AAH, led by Qays and Laith al-Khazali, is an Iran-backed, militant organization that has claimed responsibility for more than 6,000 attacks against U.S. and Coalitions forces since its creation in 2006.”
This designation follows the U.S. strike targeting Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC terrorist Quds Force, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Iraq's suppressive Bassij was killed by the US military strike in Iraq.
