Qasem Soleimani

Qasem Soleimani (Persian: قاسم سلیمانی, romanized: Qâsem Soleymâni; 11 March 1957 – 3 January 2020) was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian civil war through securing Russian intervention. He was described as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East" and a "genius of asymmetric warfare". Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said Soleimani's strategies had "personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck".

In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the second-most powerful person in Iran behind Khamenei. For attacks orchestrated or attempted against Americans and other targets abroad, Soleimani was personally sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union, and was designated as a terrorist by the United States in 2005.