One US official, quoted by United Against Nuclear Iran, called it “a CIA, Pentagon, and State Department all rolled into one.” The Quds Force is the branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps that works abroad, and it has spent three decades turning local militias into instruments of Tehran’s foreign policy.
Where it came from
A Quds Corps existed in the 1980s and backed a few foreign paramilitary groups. Once the Iran-Iraq War ended, around 1990, it was set up as its own branch of the Guards. It drew veterans of the Guards’ intelligence arm and of the Ramezan Base, which had run support for Iraqi insurgents fighting Saddam Hussein. Its first deployment was in the Bosnian war.
Khamenei had given the force its mission in 1989, according to the Middle East Institute: export the Islamic Revolution across the region.
The Soleimani years
Qasem Soleimani took command in 1998 and held the job until January 3, 2020, when a US drone strike killed him shortly after he landed at Baghdad’s airport. He worked closely with Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. When the Iraq War began in 2003, he helped found Jaish al-Mahdi and went on to cultivate Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kata’ib Hezbollah. Acting with the Quds Force and a Hezbollah outfit called Unit 3800, they inflicted American casualties across Iraq.
Syria was the next test. The force raised Shiite fighters there, among them the Afghan Fatemiyoun and Pakistani Zeinabiyoun brigades, to keep Bashar al-Assad in power. The rise of the Islamic State in 2014 made Iraq lean harder on Tehran, and Soleimani moved freely through both countries. He also had the force arm and train the Houthis in Yemen.
By the account of an Iranian general, Gholam Ali Rashid, Soleimani told a security meeting three months before his death that he had nurtured six armies outside Iran. They were Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis, Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi and militias in Syria.
After him
Khamenei named Esmail Ghaani as successor within hours of the strike. Ghaani had been Soleimani’s deputy since 2007 and came up through the Guards’ intelligence branch and joint headquarters. The two had divided the work, said IRGC political deputy Rasoul Sanaei Rad: Soleimani handled external activities, Ghaani internal ones and coordination. Khamenei’s line was that the plan “will be precisely the same as it was” under Soleimani.
Analysts doubted the style would match. Ghaani lacked Soleimani’s command of Arabic and his people skills, the Middle East Institute noted, though he brought long experience in Afghanistan. Sanaei Rad said Ghaani was “extremely averse” to the spotlight, a deliberate contrast with the celebrity Soleimani cultivated after photos of him beside fighters spread online in 2014.
Washington’s view of the force has long been blunt. United Against Nuclear Iran cites the Council on Foreign Relations calling the Guards and the Quds Force Iran’s “primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad”, and says the force is accused of a role in a 2011 plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington.
Sources
- The Quds Force | UANI
- Soleimani birthed Iran's Axis of Resistance, Ghaani coordinated it
- Esmail Ghaani: Who is the new commander of Iran's Quds Force?
