The Iranian theocracy on Thursday commemorated the fifth anniversary of the death of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the chief terrorist mastermind of the world’s worst state sponsors of terrorism.
Soleimani was killed in 2020 by a drone strike ordered by once and future President Donald Trump.
The regime kicked off its grim observances a day early, as Soleimani was killed in Iraq on January 3, 2020, local time, while he was coordinating terrorist attacks against Americans with Iraqi Shiite militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Muhandis was the founder of Kataib Hezbollah (KH), the first Iraqi Shiite militia to be designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2009. He and several of his top officers were killed by the same drone strike that took out Soleimani.
KH was doing much of Iran’s dirty work in Iraq at the time, attacking American positions with rocket attacks and killing an American civilian contractor in late December 2019. Soleimani was also a driving force behind the December 31, 2019, attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Trump said he ordered the drone strike that eliminated Soleimani because he was “planning a very major attack, and we got him.”
WATCH — Trump Warns Iran: If You Attack Me, Your Country Gets “Blown to Smithereens”:
Soleimani was responsible for hundreds of American deaths during his 15-year career as head of the Quds Force, the IRGC unit that specializes in fomenting terrorism and destabilizing Middle Eastern governments. Even as the Obama administration fumbled to appease Iran and shower its terror masters with cash to pave the way for Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, it still recognized Soleimani as a fitting target for sanctions.
Iranian state mythology paints both Soleimani and Muhandis as “martyrs” to the Islamic revolutionary cause, with Soleimani deified to the point of sainthood. His death in Baghdad is described as a cruel and unjust “assassination,” without any mention of what Soleimani was doing in Iraq at the time of his death.
“Martyr Soleimani’s constant strategy was to revive the Resistance Front. He always tried to revitalize the resistance,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday.
Khamenei bizarrely described Soleimani as a “matchless” champion in the fight against terrorism and insisted his career of fighting to defend the “sacred shrines” of Iran must “remain in our political teachings” forever.
“He believed that every important regional and global incident had an impact on the issues in our country, and with this perspective and assessment, he detected the danger from outside the borders and took action to prevent and remedy it,” Khamenei said, attempting to explain why most of Soleimani’s time as head of the Quds Force was spent funneling Iranian cash to terrorists, militias, and insurgents in other countries.
Much of Soleimani’s work has been erased by the terrible year Iran’s proxy forces have suffered, from Israel’s devastation of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon after the October 7 atrocities, to the fall of dictator Bashar Assad in Syria. Khamenei nevertheless insisted Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” would emerge “victorious.”
“The defenders of shrines showed that despite the hefty investments and expenses of ill-wishers, the flag of resistance is still flying high and the enemy has not been able to and will not be able to pull down the flag of resistance in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Iran,” he said. He did not elaborate on what “shrines” Hamas was ostensibly protecting when its terrorists paraglided into Israel for a rape and murder spree on October 7, 2023.
Khamenei also promised Iran would somehow retake control of Syria from the al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim insurgent groups that overthrew Tehran’s client Bashar Assad in a lightning-fast offensive last month.
“Syria belongs to the Syrian people, and those who invade Syrian territory will undoubtedly one day be forced to retreat in the face of the power of the valiant Syrian youth,” Khamenei said, sticking with his regime’s position that the overthrow of Assad was orchestrated by the United States and Israel.
Iranian state media on Wednesday and Thursday ran propaganda-filled career retrospectives on Soleimani, including a solemn meeting between Khamenei and relatives of Soleimani and other “martyrs” on Thursday.
At that meeting, Khamenei said Iran’s enemies were making a “grave mistake,” based on their “lack of proper analysis, understanding, and knowledge of the issues,” if they thought Iran’s setbacks from the death of Soleimani through the fall of Assad have crippled the regime in Tehran.
“Know that those who are running wild today will one day be trampled under the feet of the believers,” he vowed.
Former British Minister of State Security Tom Tugendhat argued on Thursday that Khamenei was wrong, and history would mark the elimination of Soleimani as the moment the Iranian tyranny began to collapse:
I’m always struck by how some people can be much more seminal, much more key, pivotal to an organization than you realize at the time. The reality is when Qassem Suleimani was killed in January 2020, he held in his head all the relationships, all the deals for everybody around the region.
He was replaced, but he wasn’t really, because nobody could replace the personal 20-year relationships that he held. That’s really the unpicking. So I have to say, I know it’s not popular, but President Trump, effectively, was the trigger that began the fall of the Assad regime
Young members of the IRGC are saying two things. One, the old guard are corrupt and incompetent. That’s why Hezbollah has been hung out to dry and defeated. That’s why old allies like Assad have fallen … The second thing they’re saying is that they’re hearing rumors, I don’t know how true they are, but they’re hearing rumors that the ayatollah and the government in Tehran wants to talk to the Americans to try and find a way out of this and perhaps hang on.
Tugendhat was not the first to argue that Soleimani might have been effectively irreplaceable. As he mentioned, Iran’s terror master had spent many years, and a huge amount of Iranian money, building relationships with notoriously paranoid and fractious insurgent and militia groups. He was, by all accounts, exceptionally good at winning the trust of these groups and persuading them to act with deadly effectiveness in Iran’s interests.
Some regional analysts believe Soleimani’s death set the stage for the collapse of Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Almost all of those proxies, with the notable exception of the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, began suffering significant operational problems after Soleimani was gone. Over the past few months, Hezbollah in Lebanon has been pulverized by Israel, to a degree few thought possible before the Gaza war began, and the Syrian Army collapsed into dust in a matter of days.
Iranian officials have been threatening revenge against Donald Trump for the death of Soleimani ever since January 2020. Senior Quds Force commander Big. Gen. Iraj Masjedi did so again on Wednesday, calling for Trump to face “revenge” and “be prosecuted” for killing “a symbol and key figure in the fight against terrorists.”
“The U.S. president assassinated an Iranian saint. A man who was a symbol and a major force in the war on terror,” Masjedi insisted.
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