OCTOBER 30, 2019
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
DUSK
The image of Qasem Soleimani is being spit upon.
Baghdad is ablaze. There have been three weeks of protests against Iran. Now, angry Iraqis wave their country’s flag, chanting anti-Iranian slogans in the streets. The air smells of smoke and tear gas, and echoes with chants of the furious.
With the collapse of ISIS in Iraq, Soleimani and his Quds Force have aggressively moved in and are trying to control the country. Iran has invaded Iraq without the world noticing. Many Sunni Muslims object—and Iranian flags are being set on fire by the mob. The greatest ire is directed at portraits of General Soleimani, whom the Sunni loathe.
But behind closed doors at a secret location here in the capital, Soleimani himself works with Iraqi officials to stop the protests. The general has come to “offer advice,” though his real motivation is to assert Iranian power over Sunni Iraq. “We know how to deal with protests in Iran,” Soleimani tells the Iraqi officials. Indeed, since the demonstrations began, Quds militia fighters embedded within Iraqi military units have killed hundreds of suspected dissenters. The death toll now stands at 450.
Soleimani blames America for the violence, but it is Iran stoking unrest throughout the Middle East by actively enriching uranium in anticipation of producing a nuclear weapon. Israel, fearful of such a reality, is on alert. One month ago, three Israeli spies were arrested in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman, caught while trying to dig a tunnel beneath the local mosque. The plan was to fill the hole with explosives and assassinate the general by detonating the arsenal as he attended a Shia mourning ceremony.
Qasem Soleimani is confident that his Quds Force is more than capable of thwarting any future assassination attempt. His deep network of spies is everywhere in the Middle East.
And though he conducts his strategy in secret, the general has chosen to become a more prominent public figure by running for the Iranian presidency. The election is set to take place in June 2021. As he seeks to calm the chaos in Baghdad, Soleimani is increasing his social media profile, portraying himself as a peacemaker.
Soleimani is anything but that. He is a murderer and drug lord, raking in millions of dollars to fund terror organizations that are actively killing American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I swear on the grave of Khomeini I haven’t authorized a bullet against the US,” the general says.
Perhaps not a bullet—but something far worse.
In Washington, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton is speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Republican is an army veteran who served as an infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. The subject is Qasem Soleimani.
“I know the total number of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that were killed by Iranian activities, and the number has been recently quoted as about five hundred. We weren’t always able to attribute the casualties we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity even though we didn’t necessarily have the forensics to support that.”
In fact, the number of Americans actually killed by Soleimani is far higher. Estimates suggest that as many as 4,500 soldiers have lost their lives or were maimed by devices supplied by the general’s Quds Force.
Soleimani’s hatred for Americans means that he does not deal in basic explosives. Instead, he favors a brutal bomb known as an EFP—explosively formed penetrator—which is a leading cause of battlefield amputations suffered by American soldiers.
Roughly the size of a coffee can, each device curves a thin sheet of copper into an extremely deadly projectile upon detonation, traveling at six times the speed of sound—2,000 meters per second—as opposed to just 900 meters for a .50-caliber machine-gun round. This “shape charge” is powerful enough to punch a hole in the thick armor of a tank.
The devices are usually concealed inside a fake brick or rock. A passive infrared lens embedded within senses movement and triggers the explosion. The result is a supersonic teardrop of metal that severs limbs and extremities instantly.
General Qasem Soleimani not only provides the EFPs to militias in Afghanistan and Iraq but also helps them procure the training, factories, supply facilities, and even instructional videos necessary to employ the deadly weapon.
And though Soleimani is correct when he says he has never personally fired a weapon at American soldiers, he has most assuredly murdered and maimed thousands of them.
In Washington, DC, Saudi Arabian ambassador Adel al-Jubeir is a vehement critic of Soleimani. “Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism in the world. Iran has total disregard for international law and fundamental principles of international relations, such as good neighborliness and noninterference in the affairs of others. Iran has committed acts that no other country would do,” al-Jubeir states in an interview with the PBS news show Frontline.
Qasem Soleimani takes notice of al-Jubeir’s words and decides to kill him.
The plot to murder the Saudi ambassador will take place in Washington, DC. The killer tasked with the mission is Colonel Gholam Shakuri, a Quds Force commander. The plan is code-named Chevrolet. Shakuri and his accomplice, a fifty-six-year-old naturalized American citizen of Iranian birth named Manssor Arbabsiar, will place bombs in a Washington restaurant frequented by the Saudi ambassador.*
Some United States senators and congresspeople are also likely to be at the popular bistro. But Soleimani does not care. “They want that guy done, if a hundred go with him, f**k ’em,” Arbabsiar says in a call monitored by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
The assassination is thwarted. Soleimani’s plot is discovered by undercover agents of the FBI and DEA. Manssor Arbabsiar is arrested, convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced to twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary.
His partner, Quds commander Shakuri, is more fortunate. He is charged in absentia by the United States for his crimes because he has coordinated the plot from Iran, where the FBI cannot detain him.
The suitcases are heavy, weighing more than eighty pounds each.
The bags are lined up in a neat row at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. Uniformed Quds officials stand guard over the luggage. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founding member of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, has come to Iran seeking financial assistance for his nefarious activities. His nine-man delegation met with Qasem Soleimani yesterday to request funding.
Transferring money to a terrorist organization through normal banking channels is impossible. But there are other ways. General Soleimani has provided Hamas with thirty suitcases—each containing more than US$1 million in cash.
There are so many pieces of luggage that the Hamas agents cannot carry them all. The terrorists travel home with $22 million they will use to purchase weapons in order to wage war against Israel. “Soleimani had agreed to more money, but there were only nine of us, and we couldn’t carry more than that,” al-Zahar will lament.*
Soleimani will later increase Iranian aid to Hamas by sending Russian-made Kornet missiles to Gaza—“missiles that can destroy targets in the heart of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other cities of the Zionist regime,” al-Zahar will state.
Among the many attacks by Hamas using the laser-guided missiles, there is one especially heinous. An Israeli yellow school bus is destroyed. When paramedics rush to help the children, Hamas launches mortar rounds on the rescuers.
One student, sixteen-year-old Daniel Viflic, is killed when shrapnel pierces his brain.
Chalk up another victim for Qasem Soleimani.
The hanging will take place slowly. The accused is a drug dealer, a crime calling for the death penalty in Iran. Hundreds of people are executed each year for selling or just simply possessing heroin, opium, and methamphetamines. Iran takes a very hard line against narcotics, and these public executions are meant to discourage such depravity. And yet these laws do not apply to Qasem Soleimani and the drug deals that fund his operations.
A crowd gathers at the hanging site in Tehran. A construction crane sits in the public square, its boom raised high in the sky. A cable extends from the raised arm, dangling down to the ground. At the end is a noose. The accused is led forward, hands tied behind his back. The death loop is cinched tightly around his neck. Slowly, so as to make the hanging more excruciating, the crane operator raises the cable, pulling the condemned upward.
Unlike a “drop” hanging, which breaks the neck immediately, this preferred Iranian method takes several minutes to completely deprive a man’s lungs of oxygen.
Afterward, the accused is left dangling thirty feet in the air. Sometimes, when several men are hung at the same time, a small fleet of cranes is required, and the executed swing in the wind together. Very often, the brutality is televised. The men are not taken down until families pay for the noose and the rental of the construction machinery that facilitates the killings.
But not every drug dealer suffers the death penalty.
Certainly not Qasem Soleimani.
His elite Quds Force controls the Iranian drug trade, netting millions of dollars in profits each year. Revolutionary Guard ships and planes transport narcotics to Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania. From there they are transported into western Europe and around the world. Soleimani runs the operation with the blessing of his good friend the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei.
One Revolutionary Guard member will explain to the Times of London: “We were told that the drugs will destroy the sons and daughters of the West, and that we must kill them. Their lives are worth less because they are not Muslims.”
The Quds drug cartel has a global reach, ensuring that Soleimani will always have access to the money he needs to fuel his terror ambitions. His actions are meant to destabilize the Middle East. Soleimani controls Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the al-Ashtar Brigades in Bahrain. He provides GPS-guided missiles, small arms, and training in guerrilla warfare and terror to all those groups. Soleimani also funds cyberattacks, weapons, aircraft, and ships. Starting in May 2019, he provided drones as well. This allows the general to observe and attack US forces in neighboring Iraq, as well as harass American vessels in the Persian Gulf. The United States Navy has already downed two Iranian drones that strayed too close to its ships.*
Iran has been a terror haven for a long time. Beginning in 1979, agents of the regime illegally seized the US embassy in Tehran, holding more than sixty Americans hostage during the 444 days of the crisis. Hezbollah twice bombed the American embassy in Lebanon—once in 1983 and again in 1984. Another Iranian-supported attack in 1983 killed 241 American military personnel when a truck bomb exploded their barracks.
In 1996, the Iranian regime directed another bombing of American military housing in Saudi Arabia, murdering 19 Americans in cold blood. Iranian proxies provided training to operatives who were later involved in al-Qaeda’s bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, and wounding more than 4,000 others. The regime continues to harbor high-level terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, including Osama bin Laden’s son. In Iraq and Afghanistan, groups supported by Iran have killed hundreds of American military personnel.
And under General Soleimani, Iran’s ability to attack Americans continues to increase.
The Quds Force possesses the largest and most diverse ballistic-missile program in the Middle East—more powerful than even that of Israel. By 2022, Soleimani plans to have missiles capable of striking western Europe. In 2025, a next generation of weapons will have the capacity to attack the United States.
The general also has a close connection with Osama bin Laden, having sheltered Hamza, the thirty-year-old son of the 9/11 mastermind. Despite President Trump’s claim that the young bin Laden was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan earlier in 2019, there is evidence he is still alive in the Iranian capital.
The terror world has many tentacles, but most lead back to Qasem Soleimani.
The general feels untouchable, so exalted in his country that the Ayatollah Khamenei recently bestowed upon him Iran’s most prestigious medal, the Order of Zulfaqar. He is the first man to receive the award since the Iranian Revolution, forty years ago.
These are indeed heady times for the Quds Force and its leader. Iran is on the verge of controlling Iraq, it is aiding the killing of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Soleimani himself is incredibly wealthy.
But all the money in the world will not save him.
It is another hot day in Tampa, Florida. Leadership of the US Army Central Command, meeting in private, is compiling a list of reasons to take action against Qasem Soleimani.
As far back as 2007, the United States has targeted Soleimani. In that year, a team led by General Stanley McChrystal observes a convoy carrying the Iranian general as it travels through northern Iraq. The general is watching from a drone satellite transmission and could fire upon the vehicles in an instant. But McChrystal hesitates to give the kill order, allowing Soleimani to slip away.*
Shortly afterward, Israel targets a vehicle containing Soleimani and a Hezbollah leader. Once again, the United States is reluctant to pull the trigger.
But twelve years later, there is a new commander in chief and a new set of rules for the American military hunting terrorists.
Now, targets of opportunity have expiration dates.
And one is fast approaching for General Qasem Soleimani.