About Qasem Soleimani
Qasem Soleimani (Persian: قاسم سلیمانی, romanized: Qâsem Soleymâni; 11 March 1957 – 3 January 2020) was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian civil war through securing Russian intervention. He was described as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East" and a "genius of asymmetric warfare". Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said Soleimani's strategies had "personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck". In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the second-most powerful person in Iran behind Khamenei. For attacks orchestrated or attempted against Americans and other targets abroad, Soleimani was personally sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union, and was designated as a terrorist by the United States in 2005. Soleimani was assassinated in a targeted drone strike ordered by U.S. president Donald Trump on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. Iranian government officials publicly mourned Soleimani's death and launched missiles against U.S. military bases in Iraq, wounding 110 American troops. Iranian outlets subsequently represented Soleimani as a national hero. Two people came up with the idea of digging these tunnels: The first is the martyred commander Imad Mughniyeh, and the second is Hajj Qasem Soleimani. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that Soleimani first came to Lebanon in 1998. Soleimani gained much experience in Iranian Kurdistan which later benefitted him as he became an advisor for the Peshmerga against Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War. According to Dexter Filkins, Soleimani became the commander of the Quds Force, named after the Persian word for Jerusalem, in 1998.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.