(Fars News) A
former CIA operative described Qassem Suleimani, pictured above, the head of Iran’s Quds Force,
as the “most powerful operative in the Middle East today.” We in the intelligence arena are not surprised. We have been watching his actions for a long time.
As the commander of Iran’s Quds
Force — the foreign branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards best described
as a cross between the CIA and Special Forces — Suleimani has emerged as Iran’s
leading foreign strategist. Suleimani has fomented unrest in Iraq, lead,
supplied, and trained Bashar al-Assad's army in Syria, and maintained a vast
network of contacts and operatives throughout the world.
Due to the nature of his position,
Suleimani’s operations have usually been clandestine. It’s often impossible to
know for sure whether Suleimani and his Quds Force have been involved. But
after one look at the circumstantial evidence, patterns begin to
emerge.
Here are a few of the operations
that Suleimani has been tied to over the last twenty years.
1. Guiding the Iraqi
insurgency throughout the Iraq War (2003-2011)
Since the beginning of the Iraq
War, Suleimani has sent Quds Force agents and officers into Iraq to train,
fund, and lead Shiite militias against Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party. Once
that was eliminated, Suleimani trained his attention on US-led coalition
forces. Senior Quds Force officers, including the third highest-ranking officer
in the Force, have turned up in Iraq. At one point, it was estimated that as many as 30,000 Iranian operatives
were in Iraq.
Initially, Iranian involvement
amounted to training and arming the country's militias. After the US caught
wind of Iran’s strategy and began capturing Iranian officers, Suleimani and
Iranian forces began directly attacking coalition forces through their
proxies. In addition, Iran helped create "secret
cells," groups of 20 to 60 Iraqis that had been trained and armed in Iran, to
attack coalition forces and undermine the Iraqi government.
The Quds Force is responsible for
importing the roadside bombs, IEDs, and explosively formed projectiles from Iran that
inflicted a massive amount of casualties on coalition troops.
It’s estimated that around 20% of
American combat deaths in Iraq came directly or indirectly from Iran and the
Quds Force.
2. The 2005 Assassination of former
Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri
On February 14th, 2005, Rafic
Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon and one of the leaders of the
country's Sunni community, was assassinated when more than 2,000 pounds of TNT
detonated by his motorcade in Beirut, killing him and 21 others.
Shortly after the assassination,
the United Nations began investigating the bombing and convened its Special
Tribunal for Lebanon in 2006. The Tribunal, which is still investigating the
attack, charged four Hezbollah members in
2011, all of who disappeared afterward — although one has resurfaced
in Syria, fighting for Assad.
Many in the Tribunal believe that
Hezbollah carried out the attack with the approval and support of both Syria
and Iran. Syrian officials and Hezbollah have conversely accused Israel and the
Mossad of carrying out the assassination, although there is no evidence to
support these claims.
Investigators reportedly found that
one of the disposable cell phones used by the killers made at least a dozen
calls to Iran before and after the assassination. In addition, Iranian
operatives were overheard minutes before the assassination, directing the
attack.
“If indeed Iran was involved, Suleimani was undoubtedly at the
center of this,” Robert Baer, a former senior CIA official, told
Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker in 2013.
The assassination triggered the
Cedar Revolution, a series of demonstrations that led to the withdrawal of
Syrian troops from Lebanon. If Iran did carry out the assassination, the
expulsion of Syrian troops didn’t seem like the intended result. But that
almost didn't matter: Hezbollah ended up wrecking the country's post-Revolution
coalition government, and nearly triggered a civil war in 2008.
3. 2006 Hezbollah Cross border raid
on Israel
After years of increased tensions
between Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah fighters crossed the border into Israel and
attacked two Humvees on July 12th, 2006, killing three soldiers
and abducting two. The sophisticated attack included other Hezbollah
contingents that opened fire on seven Israeli army posts at the same time,
knocking out surveillance and communications.
The incident set off the 2006 Lebanon War. The 34-day conflict
included Israel airstrikes on both Hezbollah military targets and Lebanese
civilian infrastructure, a naval blockade, and a ground invasion of southern
Lebanon.
The conflict has been considered by
many to be the opening round of an Israeli-Iranian proxy war. Iranian
Revolutionary Guards reportedly assisted Hezbollah
fighters in firing rockets on Israel, and helped operate Hezbollah outposts
during the war. Iran has long been involved with Hezbollah, helping
to form the group and providing training and financing since its inception.
According to some Middle Eastern
security officials, the original cross-border raid was enacted with Suleimani’s
guidance, though he did not expect such an intense reaction from
Lebanon's southern neighbor.
4. Arranging the 2006 deal
that made Nouri al-Maliki prime minister of Iraq
When Nouri al-Maliki was selected
to be the prime minister of Iraq in 2006, the US actually saw it as a great
victory for their troubled policy in the country. After the first post-war
prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, fell from favor, the US went to great
lengths to vet potential replacements, partly out of concern over their
relationship to Iran. Maliki was seen as someone who was “independent of Iran,” Zalmay
Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq said at the time.
More recently, it has been reported
that Maliki was far more of a puppet for Iran than US policymakers had thought
or expected during the American presence in the country. In Filkins' New Yorker
exposé, he reports that Suleimani arranged the deal
that put Maliki in power by extracting promises of support from the Shiite and
Kurdish leaders. Suleimani supposedly offered benefits to those that
agreed to back Maliki, including an agreement to build a lucrative oil pipeline
to Syria.
It now appears that Maliki has been
helping Iran evade Western economic sanctions via the Iraqi banking industry.
He's provided Suleimani with proceeds from 200,000 barrels of Iraqi oil a day.
If all that is true, then it isn't such a stretch to assert that Suleimani is
the most powerful man in Iraq, the Arab League's fourth most-populous country.
5. 2007 Raid on the Karbala
provincial headquarters in Iraq
On January 20th, 2007, a team of 12
men disguised as US soldiers arrived at the Karbala Provincial Joint
Coordination Center in Iraq, where US soldiers were conducting meetings with
local officials. Once in the compound, the team headed straight for the one
building with American soldiers, capturing and eventually killing five US
troops, 3 are pictured above.
After an investigation, American
military officials concluded that the Quds Force knew
of, supported, and helped plan the Karbala attack. Many believe that
the attack was in retaliation to US forces detaining five Iranian officials
accused of helping Iraqis kill American soldiers.
The US successfully killed the
leader of the attack, a member of the Iranian-backed group Asaib al Haq, and
ended up capturing several of its planners and participants — one of whom
confirmed that the attack was ordered by Iranian officials.
Suleimani supposedly messaged the
American ambassador in Iraq, denying responsibility for the attack. Few
Americans believe him.
6. 2011 plot to assassinate the
Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, DC
In October 2011, the United States arrested Iranian-American
used-car-salesman Mansour J. Arbabsiar and Gholam
Shakuri, a known member of the Quds Force, for plotting to
murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US in Washington, DC.
The plan involved Arbabsiar hiring
assassins from the Los Zetas drug cartel for $1.5 million to bomb a restaurant
that the ambassador often visited, and included bombings at the Saudi and
Israeli embassies in Washington. The plot never got off the ground because the
Los Zetas representative that Arbabsiar was negotiating with was actually a DEA
informant.
Numerous US officials believe that
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, and Suleimani at least knew of
the plot. An FBI investigation found that money from a Quds Force bank account
had been wired to Arbabsiar and that he was able to identify Quds Force
officers from a photo array while in custody. In addition, law enforcement had
Arbabsiar make calls to Shakuri in Iran, during which Shakuri urged Arbabsiar
to carry out the plot.
Nonetheless, many Middle East and
Iran analysts found it hard to believe that Iran would carry out an attack on
US soil, using a non-Muslim proxy in such a haphazard manner. If Iran did order
the attack, it could mark a worrying shift in strategy.
7. Providing Bashar al-Assad with
billions of dollars in arms, support, strategic training, and troops in Syriaallery
While Iran and Syria have always
been close allies, Suleimani has gone a step further by taking care of the job
that dictator Bashar al-Assad and his generals couldn't: turning the tide of
the country's brutal civil war, which has killed more than 150,000 people over
the past three years.
According to American officials,
Suleimani travels to Damascus frequently,
where he operates out of a heavily fortified command post, directing
the Syrian military, Hezbollah commanders, and Iraqi Shiite militias.
Suleimani has used his connections
with the Iraqi government to arrange access to Iraqi airspace, allowing him to
fly operatives and arms to Damascus. This supply route has been integral to the
maintenance and perhaps even the survival of the Assad regime.
In addition, Suleimani reportedly
planned and orchestrated the Battle of al-Qusayr, a key
confrontation that made the Assad regime's victory over the rebels not only
possible, but also likely. The momentum of the two-week battle was shifted with
the help of Iranian and Hezbollah officers, who encircled the town.
According
to John Maguire, a former CIA officer in Iraq, Suleimani orchestrated the
Battle of al-Qusayr, which was a "great victory for him"
— another strategic masterstroke from one of the most important and shadowy
figures in the Middle East.
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