The support and financing of al-Qaeda by the Mullahs’ regime has played a key role in rebuilding its structure…

On Tuesday, January 12th, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, at the National Press Club, released information at this club for Journalists in Washington D. C. about how the Islamic Republic of Iran has provided al-Qaeda with new operations centers. Due to the appeasement policy this information had previously bypassed the press. He described in detail the operation as to how Iran has become a safe haven for al-Qaeda leaders.  Documents related to Iran’s connection and providing shelter for al-Qaeda leaders have been the subject of international debate for the past two decades.

Over the past two decades, the relationship between the regime and Sunni fundamentalist groups has gone beyond a purely political, financial, and military one, and it has had an ideological factor associated with it. Qassem Soleimani oversaw relations with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda military leaders remained in Tehran until 2015, after which Qassem Soleimani sent five of them, including Mohammed Al-Masri, to Damascus on a mission to contact ISIS forces and encourage them to secede from ISIS and join al-Qaeda.

During these years, the Quds Force organized al-Qaeda in Syria using the remnants of ISIS. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force under Khamenei, played a key role in coordinating Tehran-al-Qaeda relations and provided shelter for the bin Laden family and senior al-Qaeda commanders in Iran after the organization’s defeat in Afghanistan in 2001. Soleimani built a residential complex for them in the heart of an IRGC’s training garrison in Tehran. Last August, Abu Mohammad al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s number two figure, was killed in Tehran, which the regime initially denied, but later confirmed.

The support and financing of al-Qaeda by the Mullahs’ regime has played a key role in rebuilding its structure. “According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), this organization had only 400 members during the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and dispersed after the US invasion of Afghanistan, but with the rise of ISIS in 2013, Al-Qaeda, with the pursuit and efforts of Qassem Soleimani, also came to life.”.

Some of the details of Iran’s relationship with Al-Qaeda were obtained amid documents collected in the attack on Al-Qaeda’s headquarters in Pakistan.

According to one of the documents obtained, “a prominent member of Al-Qaeda wrote in a letter that Iran is ready to provide Al-Qaeda with everything it needs, including property, weapons, and Hezbollah’s training camp in Lebanon, in exchange for Al-Qaeda to attack US interests in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.”.

Another document states, “Iranian intelligence agencies have agreed to provide visas and facilities to Al-Qaeda forces and to shelter other Al-Qaeda members”. This was done through talks between the Iranians and Abu Hafs Al-Mauritania, one of the key figures in Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks.

The question is, why does the Iranian regime support Al-Qaeda?

Khamenei’s doctrine for his regime’s survival includes two policies: exporting terrorism to provide his regime with defense lines outside Iran’s borders and repression inside to prevent protests and uprisings. IRGC has a primary role in advancing both policies.

The IRGC’s Quds Force has had extensive terrorist interventions in various countries over the past two decades, such as Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and so on. The regime has also set up special units at its embassies in various countries and sent its trained special officers to assassinate dissidents abroad. An example of this is Assadollah Assadi, who, under the guise of a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Austria, committed covert terrorist acts and was arrested. According to documents from the Belgian court in Antwerp, Assadi was the person who came up with the plot of the bomb transfer to the meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The Mullahs’ regime’s main concern is its survival and the crises they face for its overthrow. Therefore, the Mullahs need Al-Qaeda terrorist members to survive. And uses them as leverage to extort what they want in their dealings with the world and to interfere in the region.

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social issues and economy of the middle east countries in general and Iran in particular.

It starts from 1979 till 2019.

• 1979-1983: Killing dozens of Sunni Kurds in their uprising.
• 1983: Exploding the American embassy in Beirut which led to the killing of 60 civilians.
• 1986: Hijacking plan of the Iraqi airlines in 1986 so it crashed killing 60 civilian passengers.
• 1988: Hijacking plan of the Kuwaiti airlines and killing two Kuwaiti citizens.
• 2003 till date: Merciless executing of more than 5,000 Iraqi Sunni scholars.
• 2009: Killing of hundreds of students and protestors in Tehran.
• 2013: The architect of using chemicals in Ghouta (Syria) 2013 which led to the killing of more than 3000 civilians by suffocation.
• 2013: Besieging and killing more than 700 civilians in al-Qusayr (Homs) in Syria.
• 2014: Besieging the city of Homs in Syria.
• 2016: Killing tens of thousands of civilians in two months after besieging and destroying city of Aleppo in Syria.
• 2016: Importing 110,000 Shitte mercenaries to Syria who inflicted calamities on the Sunnis and raped their women in al-Safira.
• 2016: Destroying the city of Mosul and causing the killings of 15,000 civilians and burying them under the rubble.
• 2016: Committing the massacre of residents of al-Saqlawiya area of Syria and killing 1500 Sunnis and burying them in the mass graves.
• 2016: Evicting the people of Diyala city of Iraq and dragging them into the streets.
• 2017: Besieging al-Zabadani and Madaya cities of Syria to the degree of killing 1000 children.
• 2017: Besieging the Yarmuk camp in Syria for two years until the Palestinians started eating leaves out of hunger.
• 2018: Destroying the eastern Ghouta city of Syria and killing more than 15,000 civilians after besieging it for three years.
• 2018: Destroying cities of Idlib and Hama and killing more than 25,000 civilians.
• 2019: Killing of 1500 Iranian protestors in one month of protest.
• 2019: Killing of 1200 Iraqi protestors in three months of protests.
• Evicting 13 million Syrians by making them stateless and homeless.

U.S. president Donald Trump ordered the airstrikes to eliminate him for the regional stability and peace.

Soleimani was also responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians through boosting Bashar al-Assad’s brutal genocidal regime in Syria. 

This morning, US forces killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. Soleimani was a towering figure, in command of Iran’s often brutal tactics to retain the country’s political and ideological dominance in the region and in charge of how it presented this strength to the wider world. He was revered and championed by supporters of the Islamic regime in both Iran and in the Middle East. 

Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem. The Quds Force is tasked with all the Guards’ military operations in the Middle East and beyond. But the Quds Force is not only a military force, it also determines Iran’s diplomacy in the Middle East. General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces, says he once received a text message saying: “Dear General Petraeus, you should know that I, Ghasem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.” 

As commander of the Quds Force, Soleimani was responsible for organizing Iran’s proxies in the region. He masterminded the killing and wounding of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq by Iran’s proxies. He organized and led the Iraqi militias fighting and defeating Daesh (ISIS) Sunni extremists in Iraq. Soleimani was also responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Syrians through boosting Bashar al-Assad’s brutal genocidal regime in Syria. 

In 2019, IranWire published an extensive series on the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards organization and its generals and commanders. We republish the profile here. 

On the eve of the 1982 Operation Fath-al-Mobin, Commander Mohsen Rezaei tasked a young subordinate with raising a unit of Sar-Allah soldiers in Kerman for an upcoming major offensive aimed at ejecting the Iraqi army from Khuzestan. The subordinate chosen for the assignment was a 19-year-old former construction worker named Ghasem Soleimani. 

Commander Hassan Bagheri, who was the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) first ground force commander and who spearheaded the Guards’ intelligence department, was skeptical of the decision, believing that new forces led by an inexperienced new commander would not have the capacity to meet the demands of such a key operation. Rezaei remained firm, however, arguing that Soleimani was more than up to the task. The unit would later grow into a battalion before eventually becoming the the Guards’ 41st Corps of Sar-Allah. Lead exclusively by Ghasem Soleimani after its initial inception, its soldiers hailed from the provinces of Kerman, Sistan, Baluchistan, and Hormuzgan. 

In Soleimani’s own telling, his first mission was ordered by Hossein Kharazi, then commander of the 14th Corps of Imam Hossein, to guard the 14th corps’ flanks. Biographers favorable to Soleimani have stated that this first engagement was a resounding success, but some of his contemporaries have not been as flattering toward his leadership during the campaign. In fact the former Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, Mohammad-Ali Jafari, wrote about the matter in his memoir: “In February 1982 during the Fath-al-Mobin operation, Hossein Kharazi’s corps was under pressure from two different sides because the Sar-Allah unit could not secure either flank, which Soleimani’s forces were tasked with protecting.”  

This uncomfortable divergence between myth and reality did not prevent Soleimani from hailing Operation Fath-al-Mobin as his most important success during the Iran-Iraq War. Although Soleimani had participated in previous operations, including Karbala 1 and 5, Valfajr 8, Tariq-al-Quds, and Kheibar, it was Operation Fath al-Mobin that saw him in the role of a commander for the first time. 

Ghasem Soleimani was born in 1958 in the Qanat-e-Melk village suburb of Kerman. Before the revolution, he had worked in Kerman’s water treatment plant and subsequently as a construction worker. He was an athletic youth and a frequent patron of the city’s famous traditional gyms. 

After the start of the Iran-Iraq War, Soleimani enlisted in the IRGC in 1980, and his first assignment was to guard Kerman’s airport and fleet from Iraqi air bombardments. Months later, he was deployed to combat further west, where he took charge of his unit consisting of many fellow Kerman natives. “I had a huge passion for military tactics and planning,” wrote Soleimani years later in his memoir. “I really wanted to go to combat and contribute to the war. That’s why after I was deployed on my first 15-day mission, I never went back home until the end of the war.”

A Building Mythology

Soleimani was not a yet a public figure during the Iran-Iraq War, but afterwards, Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC Yahya Rahim-Safavi appointed him as Commander of the Quds Corps. At the same time, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Ahmed Kazemi were appointed as Commanders of the Air Force and Ground Forces respectively. The three commanders were close friends, and Soleimani would later show his support to Ghalibaf by backing him during the 2013 presidential election. 

Soleimani’s fame grew exponentially during the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, where he quickly became something of a mythical figure. The roots of this myth, both fact and fiction, trace back to those early days in the Sar-Allah Corps. Anecdotes and legends of his travels run the gamut, particularly in Iraq, with stories of him pretending to be an Iraqi soldier so as to partake in a unit’s meal time or even start fights. Yet other more fantastic stories revolve around him stealing vehicles and earning the moniker “Toyota thief” from Radio Baghdad. But whatever the veracity of the claims, Soleimani has always been well known for his charismatic personality among IRGC officers, who take great interest in his speeches.   

One of his favorite commanders was his own deputy in the Sar-Allah 41st Corps, Mir-Hosseini, whom Soleimani described: “When he appeared at the frontline, his presence was calming and everyone felt assured. Mir-Hosseini was not only a man, but he was truly the Corps himself.”  

Although Soleimani was very loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei, as an IRGC commander he did not often delve into domestic politics. Unlike many other IRGC commanders, Soleimani was careful not to criticize Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and one of the architects of the Islamic Republic — but who also clashed with Khamenei toward the end of his life. Among Sar-Allah soldiers, there was a rumor that Soleimani voted for Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential election. Nevertheless, Soleimani has in the past argued for the Basij to play a prominent role in Iranian politics and criticized any ideas to the contrary.

Hezbollah Ties

Soleimani and his subordinates have in the past colluded closely with the financial and construction projects of Hossein Marashi, the spokesperson for the Executives of Construction Party and former governor of Kerman. Financial involvement also extended to entities like Mahan Airline, which was later blacklisted by the US because of its cooperation with the Quds Corps.

Soleimani’s commentary on politics has been more often found at the local level, where he has previously come out in support of Kerman’s governor, Ali Reza Razm Hosseini. But after the governor’s scandalous resignation over the revelation of his Canadian dual-citizenship, IRGC media outlets did their best to eliminate any trace of Soleimani’s prior support. 

As the Quds Corps Commander, Soleimani had strong involvement with Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups. Iranian state media has shown multiple photographs of him alongside Jihad Mughniyah, the son of the infamous Emad Mughniyah of Hezbollah. His daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, has also been spotted alongside Fatima Mughniyah, Emad Mughniyah’s daughter. 

In recent years, Iran’s foreign policy in the region has fallen deeper and deeper under the influence and control of the Quds Corps. Even many of Iran’s foreign policy elite such as the ambassador to Iraq, Iraj Masjedi, are former IRGC commanders.  

The IRGC has tried to reshape the organization’s negative image by focusing on a propaganda campaign around Soleimani’s character and myth, even going so far as to float his name as a potential presidential candidate. But considering his personality and history, the presidency was not something that he aspired to — unless it had been ordered by the Supreme Leader or other prominent clerical figures. 

Article first published on Iran Wire.