So was the & # 039; Commander in the Shadows & # 039; whose murder can provoke a war against the United States

The death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a US air strike in Baghdad (Iraq) on Thursday will probably unite his country and his allies in duel for the man who some considered Iran's second most powerful leader.

But little is known outside the Middle East about a man who played a key role in conflicts throughout the region.

Soleimani, 62, led the elite Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, which also reports to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But he has also been accused of controlling militias throughout the region, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

From the personal lawyer of the president, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, to the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, they have cataloged him as a murderer.

In announcing his death, the Pentagon blamed Soleimani for orchestrating a series of assaults on allied bases in Iraq in recent months, and for a rocket attack last week that killed an American contractor and wounded four other military personnel.

This prompted the United States to carry out five air strikes in Iraq and Syria against the weapons depots of Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia group that, he said, were responsible for the attack. In turn, these bombings - which killed 25 people - drove hundreds of militia supporters to storm the US embassy complex in Baghdad on Tuesday, December 31.

The Pentagon also said Soleimani had been actively developing plans to attack US diplomats and service members in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, meanwhile, considered Soleimani this Friday as "a martyr," and declared three days of national mourning for his death and that of other senior officials killed in the air raid.

"It was a stellar example of those educated and nurtured in Islam," Khamenei said in a statement Friday that he also called for "a severe revenge."

The United States has urged its citizens to leave Iraq, fearing reprisal attacks.

Soleimani led the Quds, designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization and considered the most powerful intelligence operation in the region for more than two decades.

He was behind the capture of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, rich in oil, from the hands of U.S. Allied Kurdish forces in 2017. And he helped the Iraqi government and Shia militias negotiate to avoid any military opposition, which was interpreted as a strategic coup for the United States.

Enemy of the Islamic State and the US

ASoleimani is also credited with fighting a US enemy, the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq. In a 2017 public letter, he denounced the "evil movement" that succeeded in "cheating tens of thousands of young Muslims" in Iraq and Syria, while blaming the United States for the rise and spread of ISIS, which is false .

Iran had launched air strikes against ISIS fighters outside Baghdad in late 2014, just as the United States and its coalition partners faced the extremist group.

ISIS, made up of Sunni extremists, was ideologically in conflict with Soleimani, a defender of the Iranian Shiite regime. Sunni and Shia believers represent two branches of Islam, often faced.

Soleimani and his commanders were on the front lines in Iraq and his name became synonymous with victories attributed to the Iraqi ground forces. It had been presented as the face of the offensive in Tikrit, a city that fell under ISIS control in 2014.

Iran sought to highlight its efforts against ISIS while protesting its death on Friday. Zarif said the murdered general had dedicated his life "to combat tyranny, oppression, terror and extremism."

Soleimani had a poor childhood in the mountains of eastern Iran and went from being a construction worker to climbing in the ranks of Iran's army in his youth, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

He became known as a war hero and a patriot, risking his life to minimize casualties among his men in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, according to a report by the 2011 American Company Institute for Public Policy Research.

Soleimani supported the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar Assad. The United Nations imposed a freeze on assets and a travel ban in 2007, and the United States sanctioned it again in response to its alleged involvement in the Syrian war in 2011.

Long known as the Shadow Commander in Western media, his profile was raised in 2015 when Iranian media began posting photos of him on the battlefield guiding the war against ISIS. His face soon appeared on the shirts and his name was mentioned in Shia music videos. His power was compared to that of a vice president.

At least 14,000 US troops have been deployed in the Gulf region since May in response to concerns about Iranian aggression. The United States blames Iran for attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf last year and an attack on key oil sites in Saudi Arabia in September.

Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers in 2018 and has imposed a wave of economic sanctions on the country's oil industry, as well as banking and other key sectors. The 2015 nuclear agreement eased U.S. sanctions. UU. and the UN against Iran in exchange for limits to the Tehran nuclear program.