TEHRAN, July 9 — Six years after a US drone strike killed Major General Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport, the shadow of the Quds Force commander still hangs over the security landscape of the Middle East. For communities across Iraq and Syria, the reverberations of his death and the decades of operations he commanded remain a lived reality. Soleimani was not merely a general.
He was the commander of the Quds Force, the elite foreign operations wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Born on March 11, 1957, in Qom, Iran, he rose to become, by many accounts, the second most powerful figure in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
His portfolio was vast and deeply interventionist.
The Syrian and Iraqi Battlefields
Soleimani played a key role in propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War, a conflict that began in 2011 and continues to this day. In Iraq, he was instrumental in coordinating Iranian-backed militias, including Kata’ib Hezbollah. He was also a central figure in the fight against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.
On January 2, 2020, Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport. Also killed was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.
The strike was the most significant targeted killing of a foreign military official by the United States since the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. The US had designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in April 2019, a move that further escalated tensions.
What It Means for People Across Asia
For communities across Asia, from the Philippines to Pakistan, the legacy of Soleimani’s network is not abstract. The Quds Force under his command built a web of proxies and partners that stretches from Lebanon to Yemen. Closer to home, the US-Iran rivalry that Soleimani embodied has direct consequences for Asian economies.
The question that lingers for communities across the region is whether the architecture Soleimani built will endure without him. The Quds Force still operates.
The militias in Iraq and Syria remain active. The Assad government in Damascus, propped up by Iranian and Russian support, still holds power. For families in Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, the future remains uncertain.
The networks that Soleimani spent decades weaving are not easily undone. And for the millions of ordinary people across Asia who live with the consequences of great-power rivalry, the story of Qasem Soleimani is far from over.
