When Esmail Qaani was chosen to lead the Quds Force, an elite wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in January 2020, immediately after Qassem Soleimani was assassinated by the U.S. outside the Baghdad airport, many doubted whether the veteran would be able to fill the very large shoes of the ‘Shadow Commander’.
Over the years, Soleimani, who was the chief of the Quds Force from 1998 until his death, had built a mythical status in the Islamic Republic as the protector of the revolution and the force multiplier of Iranian influence in West Asia. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, called him “a living martyr” while he was leading the Quds Force. Both his detractors and admirers described him as “the lynchpin” for his role in building a network of militias that were loyal to Tehran, which came to be called the ‘Axis of Resistance’. He was the viceroy of Iran’s proxies. And his death left a huge vacuum, not only in Tehran’s command structure but also in its forward defence doctrine, this was the space Brig. Gen. Qaani had to fill.
Four years later, Gen. Qaani is at the centre of a spiralling regional security crisis in West Asia. As the external arm of the IRGC, the Quds Force is responsible for coordinating with the different Iran-backed militia groups, from Hezbollah (Lebanon) to Hamas (Palestine) and Houthis (Yemen) to Kataib Hezbollah (Iraq). The axis became hyperactive ever since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, 2023.
Hezbollah is engaging Israeli troops in a limited way from Southern Lebanon; Houthis have turned the Red Sea into a battlefield and the Iraq-based Popular Mobilisation Forces, including Kataib Hezbollah, have carried out at least 165 attacks on U.S. troops and assets in Iraq, Syria and Jordan since October 7.
On January 28, three U.S. service personnel were killed in a drone attack on an American logistics hub in Jordan, most likely by Kataib Hezbollah, escalating the tensions. The attack has triggered calls in Washington for a direct attack on Iran. Will it restrain Gen. Qaani’s network?
Children of war
Born in 1957 in the holy city of Mashhad, which hosts the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of Shia Islam, Esmail Qaani grew up in the Shah’s Persia. Like millions of others in his generation, he was also swept by the revolutionary fervour of the late 1970s, which shook Iran and toppled its thousands of years old monarchy. In the early 1980s, when the newly born theocratic republic was fighting a war of existence with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Mr. Qaani joined the IRGC, which was founded in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution to protect the Islamic Republic.
The gist
According to one account, IRGC commander Mohsen Rezai was looking for guardsmen to form a division in Iran’s Khorasan province. Morteza Qorbani, one of his deputies, gave him three names — Nour-Ali Shoushtari, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Esmail Qaani (all three would go on to become influential figures in the Islamic Republic). By the time the war came to an end in 1988, Rezai appointed Mr. Qaani as the head of the Fifth Nasr Division, which fought several heroic battles during the ‘Sacred Defence’, as the war with Iraq is known among the state circles. He was, in the words of Mr. Khamenei, “one of the most prominent military commanders during the Sacred Defence”.
Gen. Qaani later recalled that his close relationships with both Soleimani and Ayatollah Khamenei went back to the days of the Iraq war. “We are the children of war,” he said about himself and Soleimani. Mr. Khamenei, also from Mashhad, used to lead mourning ceremonies for Imam Reza with “the boys from Mashhad,” who served in the Fifth Nasr Division, Gen. Qaani once wrote in a state booklet.
His battlefield experiences, close ties with the Supreme Leader as well as unflinching commitment and loyalty to the revolutionary regime helped his quiet ascent in the IRGC. In late 1990s, after Soleimani was appointed as the commander of the Quds Force, Gen. Qaani was named his deputy. While Solaimani’s focus was on building the Shia networks across West Asia, Gen. Qaani was responsible for the Guards’ activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian republics. Some reports say he was instrumental in Iran’s fight against drug trafficking from the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (1996 to 2001) as well as Iran’s support for the Northern Alliance, the ethnic militia coalition that was fighting the Taliban from northern Afghanistan in the late 1990s with support from Iran, India, Russia and Central Asian countries.
Unlike Soleimani, who was seen as a charismatic and popular leader at home, Gen. Qaani kept a low-profile, staying focussed on the operational aspects of the Quds Force. He spoke rarely to the media, and whenever he did, he unapologetically displayed his loyalty to the revolution. “The Islamic Republic is the safe haven of all [world revolutionary] movements,” he said on one occasion, defending the country’s support for different militias in the region. In 2012, when Syria was falling into chaos, Gen. Qaani told a state media outlet that the presence of the IRGC in Syria “prevented many massacres”, admitting, for the first time, that Iranian troops were present in Syria, fighting alongside the forces of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war.
When his profile rose within the IRGC, it also attracted international scrutiny. In March 2012, Gen. Qaani was added to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List by the U.S. Department of Treasury. The designation stated that Gen. Ghani’s “authority covers IRGC-QF [Quds Force], financial disbursements to IRGC-QF elements, including elements in Africa, as well as to various terrorist groups, including Hezbollah.”
Shadow war
Gen. Qaani took over the Quds Force at a time when the shadow war between Israel and Iran was intensifying. The U.S. hoped that taking out Soleimani would weaken Iran’s overseas operations. But from 2020, the Quds Force, under the command of Gen. Qaani, doubled down on its support for the militias. During the same period, Israel had stepped up targeted attacks against Iranian assets and figures both inside and outside Iran. The country was grappling with a series of protests. Arab countries were moving closer towards Israel. The Mullahs were under pressure.
In early 2023, Gen. Qaani held a series of clandestine meetings, reports about which emerged later, with the leaders of the pro-Iran militia groups. Their agenda: to launch a fresh wave of attacks on Israeli targets.
After the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Gen. Qaani publicly declared the Quds Force’s support for Hamas. “Your brothers in the Axis of Resistance stand united with you … the resistance will not allow the enemy to achieve its dirty goals in Gaza and Palestine,” Gen. Qaani said in a message to Hamas. He was not bluffing. In the past four months, the Axis has carried out multiple attacks, from the Red Sea to the U.S. hub in Jordan, turning the Gaza war into a regional security crisis.
With pro-Iran militias’ Jordan attack and America’s counter strikes in Syria and Iraq, the crisis has entered into a circle of retaliatory violence, with potential for an all-out war. Gen. Esmail Qaani, calm, resolute and ruthless, sits at the centre of this vortex.
