Qassim Suleimani, Iranian General, Cast Long Shadow Over Middle East – The New York Times, The New York Times

In July 01575879, after President Trump warned Iran’s president not to threaten the United States, a rejoinder came not from the Iranian leader but from a military figure perhaps even more powerful.

“It is beneath the dignity of our president to respond to you,”Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimanideclared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a soldier, respond to you.”

On Friday,General Suleimaniwas reported killed in an airstrikein Baghdad.

The general, a once-shadowy figure who enjoyed celebrity status among the hard-line conservatives in Iran, was a figure of intense interest to people both inside and outside the country.

It is not just that he was in charge of Iranian intelligence gathering and covert military operations, and regarded as one of its most cunning and autonomous military figures. He was also believed to be very close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and seen as a potential future leader of Iran.

That General Suleimani was in Iraq when he was killed at age 62, at the Baghdad International Airport, was not surprising.

He was in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, a special forces unit that undertakes Iranian missions in other countries. He had been named to lead it in the late s.

In that role, General Suleimani was believed to be the chief strategist behind Iranian military ventures and influence in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region and beyond. He was considered the most effective military intelligence official in the region.

A senior Iraqi intelligence official once told American officials in Baghdad that General Suleimani had described himself as the “sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq. ”

In his speech denouncing President Trump, he was even less discreet – and openly mocking.

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he said. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena. ”

Well before the speech, American officials had learned to see General Suleimani as a formidable adversary.

After the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, the United States accused General Suleimani of plotting attacks on American soldiers.

The general worked to expand influence in Iraq, tying down the American military. The Iranian government was determined to retain its influence in the region and felt threatened by expanding American military presence on its western and eastern flanks.

And in 2011, the Treasury Department placed him on a sanctions blacklist, accusing him of complicity in what American officials called a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

But at times, adversary looked more like ally, however tenuous the relationship. American officials also cooperated with the Iranian general in Iraq to reverse gains made by the Islamic State – a mutual enemy.

At the height of the Iraq War, as the Quds Force under General Suleimaniarmed and trained Shiite militias in Iraq, former American officials have said the general was stoking violence and then mediating the conflict, so he could make himself indispensable and keep the Iraqis off balance.

According to a June