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Qassem Soleimani was “a truly evil figure,” according to Gen. David Petraeus in 2008. Now the Irani general has been killed by a drone strike in Iraq. Sune Engel Rasmussen reports for The Wall Street Journal:
Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s shadow wars and military expansion in the Middle East that brought the Islamic Republic to the brink of conflict with the U.S., has been killed. He was 62.
Maj. Gen. Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike when traveling in a convoy to Baghdad. The U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement that Gen. Soleimani was targeted after intelligence learned that Iran was actively developing plans to attack U.S. servicemen and diplomats in the region.
As the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, the elite unit responsible for the Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations, Gen. Soleimani was the country’s most powerful military commander since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He was also considered a nemesis to the U.S. in the Middle East, with American officials blaming him for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and their regional allies.
Gen. David Petraeus, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, described Gen. Soleimani as “a truly evil figure” in a 2008 letter to Robert Gates, then the defense secretary.
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