Quds leader was extraordinarily successful in reshaping the region in wake of Iraq war and Syrian revolution

Who is Qassem Suleimani? Iran farm boy who became more powerful than a president

Qassem Suleimani started his working life as a skinny, impoverished child construction labourer, and ended it as the most influential military commander in the Middle East.

Through intellect, ruthlessness, courage and a dose of luck that finally ran out this week, he rose to become Iran’s second-most powerful man, official commander of Iran’s elite Quds forces and unofficial commander of a proliferation of proxy militias and allied politicians across the region.

He was killed by US drone strikes in Baghdad early on Friday morning, in the country that had been shaped as much by him as perhaps any other single individual since the fall of Saddam Hussein. He formed governments, directed policy, and for years attacked and undermined the US military.

Over a decade ago he had boasted in a text message to the newly appointed top US commander in Iraq of his power. “Dear General (David) Petraeus. You should know that I…control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.”

At the time, Syria was not on that list, but the country’s long, brutal civil war that began a few years later would help pull Suleimani out of the spymaster shadows where he once operated, into the global spotlight as a critical figure keeping embattled President Bashar al Assad in power.

Play Video 1:37 Aftermath of US airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani – video report

He was also thought to have had a role in a string of terror attacks and assassinations around the world, from the 2005 killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and to bombings of Israel’s embassy and a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, which together killed over 100 people.

His actions aimed to build, shape and bolster a Shiite axis of influence across the Middle East, to defend Iran’s revolutionary government against a world he saw as hostile.

Suleimani, 62, was not born to influence. The son of farmers from Rabord village, in eastern Iran, he finished five years of primary schooling that were compulsory at the time, then travelled to nearby Kerman city at just 13 to help his family pay off around $100 of agricultural debt.

He later moved on to a job at the city water board, got into lifting weights in his spare time, and started listening to sermons given by a radical preacher Hojjat Kamyab. Suleimani claimed this protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spurred him to ‘revolutionary activities’.

Soon after the fall of the Shah he joined a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, set up to stop a military countercoup against the new government, and got his only formal military training – a camp lasting under two months.

In his new role he was sent first to help suppress a Kurdish separatist uprising in the north west, and later served throughout the brutal Iran-Iraq war.

He knew the toll of combat intimately, serving in most major military operations during the Iran Iraq war, and like all commanders, losing large numbers of men. He was always particularly attentive to forces killed in combat and their families, but never lost his taste for battlefields, which he described as “mankind’s lost paradise”.

Play Video 3:40 Why did Trump order the killing of Iran's Qassem Suleimani? – video explainer

When the Iran-Iraq war ended, he turned his attention to combating drug trafficking along the border with Afghanistan. His success there helped win his next promotion at the end of the 1990s.

He was appointed head of the Quds force, whose name comes from the Arabic for Jerusalem, a nod to the elite unit’s founding pledge to take control of the city. They are tasked with spreading Iran’s influence abroad.

While his focus was foreign policy, Suleimani also held extraordinary influence at home, his success winning him the ear of Khameini.

Soon after taking control of the Quds force, he was part of a group of Revolutionary Guard commanders who in a letter warned reformist President Mohammad Khatami to put down student protests, or risk them stepping in. Police moved in to crush protests, as they would a decade later.

“He was more important than the president, spoke to all factions in Iran, had a direct line to the supreme leader and was in charge of Iran’s regional policy,” said Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Century Foundation think tank. “It doesn’t get more important and influential than that.”

Iran general Qassem Suleimani killed in Baghdad drone strike ordered by Trump Read more

Suleimani moved from the shadowy world of security forces to become a well-known public figure, bolstered by government projection of him as a pious patriot and national champion. He enjoyed genuine popularity at home, despite genuine ambivalence about the security forces among many Iranians.

In recent years a fondness for selfies with soldiers on the ground even spurred talk of presidential ambitions, though he always denied having an eye on the top job.

Short but so charismatic that his height seemed not to matter, Suleimani cultivated an image as a warrior, philosopher and ascetic, but when it came to war he was ultimately a pragmatist.

Though he spent much of the last two decades coordinating attacks against the US, he was willing to indirectly support his country’s great enemy in their fight against the Taliban after 9-11, and later form an unofficial alliance to fight ISIS, with US airstrikes supporting his ground forces.

Though he knew he was a target – there were reports of a failed assassination attempt late last year – he enjoyed mocking the super-power he had humbled in Iran’s backyard, both in private like the text message to Petraeus, and in public broadcasts.

One, made 18 months before his death, seems particularly ominous as Iran vows revenge, and the US administration doubles down in defence of its assassination.

“Mr. Trump the gambler, I’m telling you, know that we are close to you in that place you don’t think we are,” he said dressed in olive fatigues, and wagging his finger. “You will start the war but we will end it.”