Iran and the U.S., Part Three: Soleimani's Iran

The Iran-Iraq war, 9/11, and the story of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani, from his rise to power, to his assassination, by the U. S., to the power his legacy wields now. This episode originally ran as Soleimani's Iran https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/798532179/soleimanis-iran. You can find more of Throughline's coverage into the origins of the conflict in the Middle East here https://www.npr.org/series/1255058395/enter-title. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hey, it's Rund. The relationship between the US and Iran is on a lot of people's minds right now. And we've been bringing you episodes from our archives on how that relationship has developed over time. We started in the 1950s with the CIA-backed overthrow of the Iranian prime minister. Next, we looked at the Iranian revolution and 1979 US hostage crisis, the expansion of conflict into Lebanon, and the start of uranium enrichment programs and cyber warfare. Today, we're looking back at the Iran-Iraq war, 9/11, and the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ghazim Soleimani.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  I'm going to call from Washington. I am in a situation with Americans who are on a possible hijack.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  The doctor is not answering the phone. Our number one is in staff and our five is in staff.

• 1:17Speaker 04

  We're five six eight six five. We have, I believe, a Boeing 757. Can you see him up there, sir? I'm prepared. It looks like he's rocking his wings. He's dropping back to shore.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  I can hear you.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people...

• 1:53Speaker 02

  And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

• 2:03Speaker 05

  In the tragedy of that moment, for those of us who paid attention to Iran, there was this glimmer of hope that both the United States and Iran are adversaries of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was hosting al-Qaeda. So it seemed like there was this natural convergence of interests. And by all accounts, Iran played a quite constructive role in cooperating with the US in a campaign to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

• 2:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Karim Sajadpour.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  A senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and adjunct professor at Georgetown.

• 2:40Speaker 06

  Until 2001, Iran was boxed in. It was isolated and surrounded by enemies. On the east side, the enemy was the Taliban regime. On the western side, Baghdad and Saddam Hussein's regime. The terrorist attacks of September 11th of 2001 changed that situation completely.

• 3:03Rund Abdelfatah?

  Because the US would soon go after both of Iran's enemies.

• 3:10Speaker 06

  The Revolutionary Guard welcomed that development.

• 3:12Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Revolutionary Guard is a military arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's also called the IRGC.

• 3:18Speaker 06

  And there were secret meetings in Geneva. The IRGC intelligence officers handed over maps and exact locations of Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan to American representatives, for which American representatives were very thankful, because American intelligence presence at the time in Afghanistan was very limited.

• 3:40Speaker 07

  This is Ali Alfonet. He's a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute. He's been researching the Revolutionary Guard for years, and he wrote the book on the topic called...

• 3:51Speaker 06

  Do you believe it or not? I don't remember it right now. I don't know.

• 3:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  Iran Unveiled?

• 3:57Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, Iran Unveiled. I never liked the title of the book. That's why I don't remember.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  There was this hope in the air that maybe there's finally an opportunity for US-Iran rapprochement. Many Iranians were hopeful about that.

• 4:15Speaker 06

  But the good vibes between the two changed completely when President Bush delivered his so-called Axis of Evil speech.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  In which he put Iran, North Korea, and Iraq lumped them as part of one axis of evil.

• 4:29Speaker 07

  States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  That only confirmed the already very cynical worldview of Iran's hardliners that cooperation with the United States is futile.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  The Iranian side and the Revolutionary Guard, they felt betrayed.

• 4:58Speaker 05

  They felt they had played a constructive role in helping to get rid of the Taliban.

• 5:04Speaker 06

  In their own opinion, they had helped the United States.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  And they were rewarded by being placed in the axis of evil.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  At that time, the Revolutionary Guard and the political leadership in the Islamic Republic decided that President Bush could not be trusted and the United States was a very, very serious threat. They also believed that it was about time to impose some losses on the United States.

• 5:33Speaker 06

  That became reality after 2003, where the United States also invaded Iraq.

• 5:39Speaker 07

  Let me say this to all Iraqis who are listening. The regime is not telling the truth. There are no negotiations taking place with anyone in the Saddam Hussein's regime. There will be no outcome to this war that leaves Saddam Hussein and his regime in power. Let there be no doubt.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Many of the greatest advocates of the Iraq war believed that this would be a project to democratize the entire Middle East. And that's going to immediately delegitimize the Iranian regime. It's going to delegitimize the theocracy in Iran. And so if you're Qassem Soleimani and Ayatollah Khamenei, you think to yourself, "We will do everything in our power to make sure that the US war in Iraq is a colossal failure."

• 6:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Revolutionary Guard and Qassem Soleimani embody both sides of the Islamic Republic of Iran's identity. On the one hand, they position themselves as the only power in the Muslim world resisting American imperialism. And on the other, they behave cynically and try to dominate the affairs of the Middle East at any human cost.

• 6:54Speaker 07

  In this episode, we're going to explore the origins of the IRGC and the story of Qassem Soleimani to understand exactly what their impact has been on the Iran-US relationship.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Hi, this is Maryam from Iran, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 7:32Speaker 07

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• 8:51Speaker 03

  The goat thief.

• 9:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is the sound of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, leading prayers at the funeral of Qassem Soleimani.

• 9:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  After a few minutes,

• 9:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  he breaks down and cries.

• 9:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  This moment perfectly illustrates the impact of Soleimani's death. Here you have the most powerful person in the country, the Middle East's longest-running autocrat, weeping openly because one of his soldiers has died. But he wasn't just any soldier. He was the head of Iran's Al-Quds Force, which is the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard, established after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when Iran's king, the Shah, was dramatically overthrown by a mass movement supporting the cleric Ayatollah Khomeini.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Ayatollah, do you know yourself whether your followers are armed?

• 10:38Speaker 04

  They have told me that they are getting prepared and...

• 10:42Speaker 05

  I have given the permission to prepare themselves. Which means getting arms.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Yes. The Revolutionary Guards were essentially set up in the immediate aftermath of the revolution because the Shah's military, which Ayatollah Khomeini inherited with the revolution, he was inherently mistrustful of them because he said, "These are not my men. These were men who were trained by the Shah's government." And so, like most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, they were extremely paranoid about the prospect of a coup. And for that reason, they set up this initially ragtag group of men, they called the Guardians of the Revolution, Sebpaya Postarane and Qalab, to be the protectors of the revolution.

• 11:29Speaker 06

  And even if you look at the name of the institution, the exact and word-by-word translation is "The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution." In other words, the name Iran is not even mentioned in the name of the organization. And in the logo of the organization, there is a picture of the globe, not a map of Iran. So clearly, this group of Iranian revolutionaries perceive their own organizations as the vanguard of an internationalist revolution.

• 12:19Speaker 07

  This is Qassem Soleimani speaking.

• 12:33Speaker 07

  When he died, he was one of the most powerful and well-known people in the Middle East. But his story starts the exact opposite way it ended, in complete obscurity. He was born the...

• 12:46Speaker 06

  ...son of landless peasants who left school after only five years of schooling, left the village mountain of Raabor, goes to Kermon, and begins working as a construction worker.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  There is no record of Mr. Soleimani being a revolutionary activist prior to the Revolution of 79. After the Revolution of 79, he appears to have joined the local branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Kerman. At that time, we are not aware of his ideological beliefs. But there is one thing that we know in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. And it is that many of them more or less lost their belief in the clerical class. They believed in Khomeini, yes, as a spiritual leader and as a leader of the revolution. But most of the other members of the clerical class, they completely distrusted. And the reason for that is that Revolutionary Guard officers, they were taken out and recruited

• 13:51Speaker 06

  to serve as personal bodyguards to the clerics. As personal bodyguards, they had to live physically under the same roof as members of the clergy. And when you live with people, you find out that not everyone wearing a cloak and a turban is a saint. You find out that someone who, from the pulpit of the mosque, is preaching against drinking alcohol perhaps enjoys a drink at home. Somebody who is railing against homosexuality may be interested in handsome young men at home. So the sanctity of the clerical class completely came down crashing.

• 14:30Speaker 06

  So instead of being overtly anti-clerical, the IRGC officer corps, including Mr. Soleimani, they developed an ideology which mixed Shia Islam and Persian nationalism, Iranian nationalism. So in that sense, they managed to combine the two. And this combination was so unbelievably potent that it managed to mobilize millions of Iranians.

• 14:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  When Qassem Soleimani joined the Revolutionary Guards, he was very young, only in his early 20s. But he still managed to impress his commanders enough to get an important task, one that probably had an impact on him for the rest of his life.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  One of his earliest assignments was to go quell a Kurdish rebellion in northwest Iran.

• 15:21Speaker 06

  Because at the time, there was an anti-government uprising in Kurdistan.

• 15:26Speaker 05

  And if you see the photographs of that rebellion, they are incredibly violent. Approximately 10,000 Kurds died during that period, and I think that that was his baptism into that kind of career.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  He saw terrible things with his own eyes, and perhaps he also engaged in in acts which are difficult to defend morally. But at the time, it was perceived as necessity in order to preserve the territorial integrity of Iran.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  Immediately after that came the heroic phase of the Revolutionary Guards' history in Iran, and that is the war with Iraq.

• 16:29Speaker 07

  In 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded southwestern Iran, and the Revolutionary Guard forces were some of the first to respond.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  In the frontline cities, Iranian troops hurried to engage the invaders.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Local resistance was led by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who were fiercely loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  What was initially this small ragtag group of men mushroomed into thousands of men.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  They relied heavily on rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and in sporadic engagements, exacted a heavy toll of the invading forces.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  From their example stemmed the Iranian mood of self-sacrifice in a holy war.

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Iraq, you know, in the beginning of the war was occupying some of Iran's most important oil-producing areas. If Iran lost land to Iraq, the entire country would collapse.

• 17:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  Even though the Iranian side was outgunned, they were able to push Iraq's military back to its borders in two years.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  [speaking Iranian]

• 18:13Speaker 07

  To those who are sitting in the house of God, standing up against the enemies of God, I will kiss your hands and shoulders, because the hands of God are above you.

• 18:30Speaker 07

  Qassem Soleimani became a Revolutionary Guard commander and began to build his reputation as a brave warrior.

• 18:37Speaker 06

  This is the commander who would be talking personally to all men under his command before each attack. And we are talking about the war, which most of all resembles World War I. It was trench warfare. You had at least 250,000 Iranians being killed in that war.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  He wasn't this commander who would sit in a bunker in Tehran and order people around. You know, he liked to go out there in war zones and appear to be, you know, a man of the people.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  And here you have one commander, a young man from Kerman, doing reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines to minimize the risk for men under his command. And I'm really emphasizing this because most of the people from Kerman, they were in the same division, and many of them were actually personal friends and sometimes family members of Mr. Soleimani. On one occasion, Radio Baghdad, which was transmitting programs in Persian language, made Mr. Soleimani a minor celebrity of the war. Because on one particular occasion, when Mr. Soleimani was doing a reconnaissance mission, this, you know, young peasant sees a goat. And he steals the goat,

• 19:50Speaker 06

  brings the goat back and prepares kebab, you know, for his men. And Radio Baghdad apparently heard of this story and began propagating the name Soleimani the Goat Thief.

• 20:17Speaker 07

  With all my soul and belief, I believe our war was full of those blessed souls whom the heavens were ecstatic to meet.

• 20:28Speaker 07

  Soleimani the Goat Thief went on to fight for the entirety of the Iran-Iraq war with almost no leave, repeatedly committing acts of bravery. By 1988, when the war ended, he was widely considered to be a war hero.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  He had this charisma, which really engendered enormous loyalty and affection. And even after the war ended, you know, he didn't, like many revolutionary guardsmen, then just enter the private sector and try to go off and get rich. Like, his entire life was the revolution and projecting Iranian power.

• 21:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  At the end of the war, Soleimani was sent back to his home province, Guermand, where he became the chief of the local Revolutionary Guard Force.

• 21:28Speaker 06

  Guermand province is close to the Afghan and Pakistani border. And at the time, in the 1990s, many Afghan and Iranian drug cartels were operating in those areas, transporting particularly opium from Afghanistan to Iran and from Iran to the international market.

• 21:46Speaker 06

  Mr. Soleimani became heavily involved in the fight against the drug cartels. Later, when Iran and Afghanistan, you know, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan were almost on the brink of a war, the Quds Force was looking for a new face, for a new commander. And because Afghanistan was the primary threat to Iran's national security, the regime needed an Afghanistan expert.

• 22:13Speaker 06

  And Mr. Soleimani was one of those people. So that was the reason why he became the chief commander of the Quds Force.

• 22:25Speaker 07

  Qassem Soleimani, in the course of two decades, had gone from a completely unknown construction worker to the head of Iran's most important intelligence military organization. But this was only the first half of his rise. Because just three years into his tenure as the head of Al-Quds Force, 9/11 happened.

• 22:49Speaker 07

  He found himself right in the middle of the action, helping shape Iran's response to an incredibly difficult foreign policy challenge. And in the process, he showed a more cynical, deadly face to the world.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Hola, me llamo Iliana. Soy a mano desde Houston, Texas. Y vos estás escuchando Throughline de NPR. From Tine and Ron, I love y'all. You make sitting in Houston traffic way more enjoyable. Thanks.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready-to-cook pizza, no-way-antibiotics-ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3 at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Allianz Travel Insurance. The kids are with grandma while you're at a resort spa in Italy for your birthday. Then, your phone rings. Instead of hearing the "Happy Birthday" song you were hoping for, you hear a symphony

• 24:07Speaker 00

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• 24:44Speaker 04

  Part Two: Gospel of Chaos.

• 25:03Speaker 05

  After Iran fell out with the US in Afghanistan, they caught a break. A strange opportunity presented itself. When the Taliban government collapsed, many members of al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into Iran. They were quickly arrested and interrogated by Iranian intelligence. And at that time, there was a debate within Iran about whether these Sunni jihadists were a threat to Shiite Iran or whether they were an asset. You know, there were Bin Laden family members. There was a guy who later went on to become the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  And I think Qassem Soleimani was unique. That was kind of his sinister genius in thinking, you know what? We can potentially use these folks.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  And Soleimani assigned two Revolutionary Guard commanders to essentially tend to their needs. They were given televisions. They were given money to build a library. Their families were taken out on shopping outings. One of the most notorious al-Qaeda explosives experts, a guy who's still alive. He's still on the run, Saif al-Adl. He had access to this very posh gym in north Tehran in a neighborhood called El-Ahia, where he used to swim laps alongside foreign diplomats.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  And, you know, the children of Osama Bin Laden affectionately called Qassem Soleimani "Haji Qassem." They used to break bread together.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  My friend Syamak was tortured in prison. He was in solitary confinement. And it really angers me to think that hardened jihadists, you know, al-Qaeda members, were treated as guests in Iran. And real patriots who love their country are treated like criminals and put into solitary confinement and exiled. And I think that history is not going to reflect well on Qassem Soleimani when his biographies are written in the future.

• 27:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  Now that Soleimani had these Al Qaeda fighters on his side, he had to figure out exactly how to use them.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  The way they figure out to do that initially is by taking these Al Qaeda jihadists and simply unleash them into Iraq.

• 27:47Speaker 05

  With the understanding that you guys, go do what you do. Go after the United States.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Car bombings, suicide bombings. And just a few months into the war, August of 2003,

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian Al Qaeda leader, he sets off these three major bombs, which essentially destroys the American experiment in Iraq in its infancy.

• 28:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  One bomb hit the Jordanian embassy. Another hit the United Nations, which reduced their peacekeeping presence there.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  And lastly, Zarqawi conducted this car bombing against the major Shiite shrine, Imam Ali Mosque in Najab.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  This was unheard of at the time, that someone would go set off a car bombing at a mosque during Friday prayers.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  This totally radicalized the Shiite community in Iraq. And it essentially pushed them into the arms of Iran and Qassem Soleimani, who said to the Shiites of Iraq, "We can protect you."

• 29:18Speaker 05

  You know, there's some slight parallels here with the way the United States fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Because the United States also supported these Mujahideen, you know, essentially the jihadists of their day, to go fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, obviously not realizing that those folks would be the antecedents of al-Qaeda.

• 29:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  Different conflict, same strategy.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  And you never understand until years later what is going to be the residual impact of these choices.

• 29:59Speaker 07

  Soleimani didn't just use Sunni extremists to cause chaos in Iraq. He also used Iran's money and influence to organize militias among his fellow Shiites in southern Iraq.

• 30:10Speaker 06

  It managed to use the Iraqi Shia militias, who should be thankful to the United States military, because the US had overthrown Saddam's regime, but the Islamic Republic managed to mobilize them against the United States.

• 30:25Speaker 06

  It served the interests of the Islamic Republic to maintain Iraq in a state of controlled chaos and anarchy, so that the United States could not declare itself the winner of developments in Iraq.

• 30:41Speaker 07

  How does Ali or anyone else know this? Well, one Iraqi Shia fighter, while being interrogated by American military intelligence, explained exactly how he worked with Iran.

• 30:52Speaker 06

  He would go to Tehran. He would receive bags of money, approximately $700,000 to up to $1 million, to form a group of fighters in Iraq.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  Al-Quds Force funded, equipped, and even trained Iraqi Shia militias on how to ambush and attack vulnerable American forces.

• 31:22Speaker 07

  One of their most effective tactics was teaching Shia fighters how to use IEDs.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  Improvised explosive devices.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  Which proved to be very effective in getting through metal tanks and maiming and killing, injuring US troops.

• 31:44Speaker 06

  At the very minimum, 600 American servicemen were killed in those years.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  US officials hold Soleimani directly responsible for conceiving of that. And that's why you have, you know, one if not two generations of American military forces, whom if you were to ask them, "Who is your worst adversary in the world, the person you see as the greatest threat to the United States?" And even when Osama bin Laden was living and Baghdadi was living, they would have still said Qassem Soleimani.

• 32:23Speaker 06

  Mr. Soleimani believed that by imposing heavy losses on the United States military in Iraq, that it was possible to target the psychology of the American society. Every single time an American is coming home in a body bag, it would have an impact on willingness and support of the American public to preserve a sizable United States military presence in Iraq. And in some ways, it worked.

• 32:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  American public support for the war in Iraq waned as the conflict became more costly in lives and money. Slowly, the American presence in Iraq began to shrink. By 2011, the number of American soldiers there was a fraction of what it was just five or six years earlier.

• 33:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  Emboldened by their success and fearing the downfall of allies in the Middle East, the Revolutionary Guard, with Qassem Soleimani leading the way, began to make moves beyond Iraq.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Bob Rogers from Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. And you are listening to Throughline on NPR, where the past is omnipresent.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready to cook pizza, no way in Ibyotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better, save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Allianz Travel Insurance. Everything changes with the seasons, including your travel plans. From Japan's cherry blossoms in the spring to Quebec's winter carnival, there's so much you're excited to see.

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• 35:28Speaker 06

  At least 20 protesters have been killed during marches in several Syrian cities. It's estimated that up to a million people have taken to the streets to challenge President Bashar al-Assad's rule. Protesters demanded the end of the regime, ripping down a statue of the president's father, bracing to see the reaction of heavily armed government security forces. The answer came quickly and violently.

• 36:03Speaker 06

  Here they are, members of the elite Revolutionary Guards on the front lines of Syria's civil war. The Islamic Republic perceives Syria as a bridgehead connecting Western Afghanistan to Iran, to Iraq, to Lebanon. Mr. Rafsanjani, the former president, he referred to this as a string of pearls. If one of them collapses, it's going to cause very serious trouble for the rest of the system. And the strategic thinking of Mr. Rafsanjani was shared by the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards.

• 36:48Speaker 06

  And Bashar al-Assad had to be defended at all costs, at all costs. Not because they liked Bashar al-Assad, they criticized him as a matter of fact, but they believed that collapse of the Bashar regime and emergence of a different type of regime, it would be bad for Iran. So the Islamic Republic began systematically to send first, God's force officers, then deployed Lebanese Hezbollah, who did so rather unwillingly, because Hezbollah's raison d'etre is to protect Arabs against Israel, but here they are going to kill fellow Arabs in Syria. So it was very embarrassing for Hezbollah, but they also felt that they had no choice.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  And at some point, of course, they were so desperate that Major General Soleimani had to travel to Moscow and ask Vladimir Putin for military support because they needed air support. And after that, things began to go very well for the Revolutionary Guard. The Revolutionary Guard commanders, they genuinely believed that Syria was a sensational success story. They won against all odds.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  While Damascus remains a target for armed groups in the region, local residents are without doubt Bashar al-Assad has won the war.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Of course we won the war, no one can argue with that. And as long as our president is in power, everything will be fine in Syria.

• 40:16Speaker 06

  The war in Syria not only provided Revolutionary Guard with an opportunity to achieve military success on the ground, but unfortunately also gave them the opportunity to compromise themselves ethically and morally.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  The United Nations has found massive evidence pointing to the Syrian government's involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Syrian activists have accused the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of killing hundreds of people in a nerve gas attack. The accusation goes to the highest levels and implicates the president Bashar al-Assad.

• 41:04Speaker 06

  They are accomplices of Bashar al-Assad's regime, use of chemical weapons against the Syrian population. They're accomplices of the Syrian regime using famine against his own population as a means of controlling them.

• 41:28Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 2014, after years of fighting in Syria and Iraq, Qassem Soleimani and the Quds Force, all of a sudden, had a new problem: ISIS.

• 41:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  And there's a logical question here. If Iran had been able to work with al-Qaeda, then why couldn't they just support ISIS? Well, al-Qaeda was a little different than ISIS.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Al-Qaeda was not out gratuitously beheading Shiites the way that ISIS was doing. For the Iranian regime, ISIS was just beyond the pale.

• 42:09Speaker 06

  Islamic Republic and the Revolutionary Guard Corps perceived this as a serious threat, which could take away all their gains from them.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  ISIS posed a real threat to Iran's Shiite allies in Iraq.

• 42:22Speaker 06

  At some point, Islamic State was threatening Baghdad.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  At the same time, I would argue that both Iran and the Assad regime in Syria actually utilized these Sunni jihadists.

• 42:36Speaker 06

  Presence of such an inhumane enemy, universally condemned as a terrorist organization, it was not such a bad thing from the Iranian side. Because Islamic Republic, which had hit her to difficulties explaining and legitimizing its military actions in Iraq and Syria, suddenly had a legitimate cause to engage in the fight against terrorists. On those occasions, just as it did before, you know, in 2001 in Afghanistan, the United States and Islamic Republic cooperated with each other. The United States Air Force was providing air cover to the Quds Force operatives and Mr. Soleimani personally,

• 43:21Speaker 06

  so that he could cleanse the city of the creeps of the Sunni radical elements and Islamic State. At that time, in 2014 and 15, the Quds Force and Mr. Soleimani, both of them were on the list of designated terrorists of the United States government. So you clearly see strange bedfellows at times of war.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  And this is the moment when Qassem Soleimani became internationally known. The Revolutionary Guard knew his appeal. His face was put on posters. Camera crews followed him as he visited soldiers in Syria. Music was made about him. And all the way up to his death, he was successfully marketed.

• 44:09Speaker 05

  As kind of this Shiite Che Guevara.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  This is footage of Qassem Soleimani speaking to Al-Quds Force in Syria. His Arabic is actually pretty good.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  And this is a song in Arabic, made to honor him.

• 45:04Speaker 06

  The late Major General Soleimani was a man with at least two faces. One face, that is the face of a young man who left his little village to go to the front, to defend Iran against the invading Iraqi army in 1980.

• 45:23Speaker 06

  That very same individual, of course, also had another face. That face is the face of a general who cynically attacked and killed American servicemen in Iraq since 2003. And also, most unfortunately, engaged or was complicit in war crimes in Iraq and also in Syria. These two faces show the complexity of the individual.

• 45:58Speaker 06

  I respect the first one, the war hero. But of course, I condemn the other face, which is that of a war criminal.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  I think I have a somewhat different perspective here than many analysts of Iranian origin, because not only did I live in Iran, but I also lived in Beirut. And I would travel every couple of weeks to Damascus for a year. And so, when I see the destruction of Syria, these numbers are not just a statistic for me. The 13 million people displaced, 600,000 people killed. I see Basam Soleimani as being directly complicit in that horrific violence.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  This is frankly my problem with a lot of Iranians who comment on this, because I feel like they totally lack a self-awareness about... They only view him in this Iranian context, and they don't give a shit about the role he played elsewhere in the region. And I tell people, "How would you feel as an Iranian to watch millions of Iraqis mourning Saddam Hussein?"

• 47:18Speaker 05

  A lot of people commented about Soleimani was that he was self-spoken. He wasn't someone who was like this fire-breathing radical. And I'm always reminded of this Persian saying about the clerics, that if you look at the hands of the mullahs of the clerics...

• 47:42Speaker 05

  Their hands are always perfectly manicured, as if they haven't done any manual labor in their life, or even known war.

• 47:50Speaker 05

  They talk a tough game, but they've never served in conflict. And I always think that's probably one reason why Soleimani was self-spoken. He didn't need to breathe rhetorical fire, because everyone knew he had his elbows deep in blood.

• 48:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdelfatah.

• 48:30Speaker 07

  I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

• 48:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  And you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 48:34Speaker 07

  This episode was produced by me.

• 48:37Rund Abdelfatah?

  And me, and.

• 48:38Speaker 07

  Jamie York. Lawrence Wu.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Laine Calhoun Levinson. Lou Alkowski.

• 48:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  Nidjri Aitken. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.

• 48:48Speaker 07

  Thanks also to Anya Grunman, Aida Porasad, and Austin Horn.

• 48:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  Our music was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric.

• 48:56Speaker 07

  If you'd like something you heard, or you have an idea for an episode, please write us at [email protected].

• 49:03Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thanks for listening.

• 49:49Speaker 05

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