According to Wikipedia, Suleimani was born in Iran in 1957. He participated in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 and, his efforts in the war, which ended with the bitter defeat for Khomeini, qualified him to the leadership of the so-called al-Quds Force, the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Described by the Washington Post as the most influential man in Iranian politics, he is one of its most important decision makers in Iran.
The Guardian described him as the "de facto ruler of Iraq", a role that seemed to be confirmed when the President of the Iraqi Parliament Iyad Allawi declared three years ago that politicians in Iran told him: If you want to occupy the post of Prime Minister in Iraq, you must meet Qassem Suleimani and reach an understanding with him. Allawi refused to do so, and hence Nouri al- Maliki became a prime minister who performs the will of Suleimani in Iraq as "The skull of the Arabs".
Suleimani fans have created several pages dedicated to him on social networking sites in which they publish his picture, along with the Shiite religious slogan for leadership "al-Wali al-Faqih".
He received orders to move to Syria when the Syrian people began to revolt and sources say he became a repressive security decision-maker in Syria.
There had been rumors that he was killed in the bombing of the crisis cell in July 2012, which saw a number of other senior defense personnel killed.
But Suleimani returned to the fore a few days ago, when the West began to think about how to deter the regime that embarrassed them by increasing the dose of chemical weapons, contrary to the secret agreement to kill Syrians in ways that do not motivate Western public opinion.
According to Suleimani, "to defy the West, the Levant is our gate to the sky and it will be a cemetery for Americans."
Suleimani gave some free advice to Americans, saying: "Any American soldier who leaves his plane or ship and lands in Syria should carry his coffin with him."
Suleimani's speech is not the speech of one sympathetic to or supportive of the regime, but the words of a man who has troops on the Syrian ground who obey his commands. Perhaps the most prominent are Hezbollah forces deployed in Damascus and its countryside, Homs and its countryside, Aleppo and its countryside, and what is called the brigade of Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas in the area of the Seyda Zainab shrine.
Most of the brigades are Iraqi Shiites and Iranians, mercenaries, or those who the Iranians could brainwash to convince they are defending Seyda Zainab, as if her grave has not existed for 1,400 years, and as if those who established it, served it and visited it as a blessing were not Syrians, well before the creation of the state called Iran.
Translated and edited by the Syrian Observer
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