Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. From 1998 until his assassination in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations.

When was Qasem Soleimani born?

Qassem Soleimani, also spelled Qasem Soleimani or Qassim Suleimani, (born March 11, 1957, Qom?, Iran [see Researcher's Note]—killed January 3, 2020, Baghdad, Iraq), Iranian major general and commander of the Quds Force (1997/98–2020), a wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for IRGC foreign ...

Why did Iran invade Iraq?

Iraq's primary rationale for the invasion was to cripple Iran and prevent Ruhollah Khomeini from exporting the 1979 Iranian Revolution movement to Shia-majority Iraq and internally exploit religious tensions that would threaten the Sunni-dominated Ba'athist leadership.