Who was powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani?

For Iranians whose icons since the Islamic Revolution have been stern-faced clergy, General Qassem Soleimani widely represented a figure of national resilience in the face of four decades of US pressure.

For the US and Israel, he was a shadowy figure in command of Iran’s proxy forces, responsible for fighters in Syria backing President Bashar Assad and for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.

Gen Soleimani survived the horror of Iran’s long war in the 1980s with Iraq to take control of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, responsible for the Islamic Republic’s foreign campaigns.

Relatively unknown in Iran until the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Gen Soleimani’s popularity and mystique grew out of American officials calling for his killing.

“The warfront is mankind’s lost paradise,” Gen Soleimani recounted in a 2009 interview.

“One type of paradise that is portrayed for mankind is streams, beautiful nymphs and greeneries. But there is another kind of paradise. … The warfront was the lost paradise of the human beings, indeed.”

A US air strike killed Gen Soleimani, 62, and others as they travelled from Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday morning.

The Pentagon said President Donald Trump ordered the US military to take “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing” a man once referred to by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “living martyr of the revolution”.

Gen Soleimani’s luck ran out after being rumoured dead several times in his life.

Those incidents included a 2006 plane crash that killed other military officials in north-western Iran and a 2012 bombing in Damascus that killed top aides of Assad.

More recently, rumours circulated in November 2015 that Gen Soleimani was killed or seriously wounded leading forces loyal to Assad as they fought around Syria’s Aleppo.

Iranian officials quickly vowed to take revenge amid months of tensions between Iran and the US following Mr Trump pulling out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

While Gen Soleimani was the Guard’s most prominent general, many others in its ranks have experience in waging the asymmetrical, proxy attacks for which Iran has become known.

“Trump through his gamble has dragged the US into the most dangerous situation in the region,” Hessameddin Ashena, an adviser to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, wrote on the social media app Telegram.

“Whoever put his foot beyond the red line should be ready to face its consequences.”

Born on March 11 1957, Gen Soleimani was said in his homeland to have grown up near the mountainous and historic Iranian town of Rabor, famous for its forests, its apricot, walnut and peach harvests and its brave soldiers.

The US State Department has said he was born in the Iranian religious capital of Qom.

By the time he was 13, Gen Soleimani began working in construction, later as an employee of the Kerman Water Organisation.

Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution swept the shah from power and Gen Soleimani joined the Revolutionary Guard in its wake.

He deployed to Iran’s north west with forces that put down Kurdish unrest following the revolution.

Soon after, Iraq invaded Iran and began the two countries’ long, bloody eight-year war.

The fighting killed more than one million people and saw Iran send waves of lightly armed troops into minefields and the fire of Iraqi forces, including teenage soldiers.

Gen Soleimani’s unit and others came under attack by Iraqi chemical weapons as well.

Amid the carnage, Gen Soleimani became known for his opposition to “meaningless deaths” on the battlefield, while still weeping at times with fervour when exhorting his men into combat, embracing each individually.

But after Mr Rafsanjani, Gen Soleimani became head of the Quds Force.

He also grew so close to Ayatollah Khamenei that the Supreme Leader officiated the wedding of the general’s daughter.

As chief of the Quds – or Jerusalem – Force, Gen Soleimani oversaw the Guard’s foreign operations and would soon come to the attention of Americans following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

In secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, US officials openly discussed Iraqi efforts to reach out to Gen Soleimani to stop rocket attacks on the highly secured Green Zone in Baghdad in 2009.

Another cable in 2007 outlines then-Iraqi president Jalal Talabani offering a US official a message from Gen Soleimani acknowledging having “hundreds” of agents in the country, while pledging “I swear on the grave of (the late Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini I haven’t authorised a bullet against the US.”

US officials at the time dismissed Gen Soleimani’s claim as they saw Iran as both an arsonist and a fireman in Iraq, controlling some Shiite militias while simultaneously stirring dissent and launching attacks.

In a 2010 speech, US General David Petraeus recounted a message from Gen Soleimani he said explained the scope of Iranian’s powers.

“He said, ‘Gen Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan’,” Gen Petraeus said.

The US and the United Nations put Gen Soleimani on sanctions lists in 2007, though his travels continued.

In 2011, US officials also named him as a defendant in an outlandish Quds Force plot to allegedly hire a purported Mexican drug cartel assassin to kill a Saudi diplomat.

But his greatest notoriety would arise from the Syrian civil war and the rapid expansion of so-called Islamic State (IS).

Iran, a major backer of Assad, sent Gen Soleimani into Syria several times to lead attacks against IS and others opposing Assad’s rule.

While a US-led coalition focused on air strikes, several ground victories for Iraqi forces came with photographs emerging of Gen Soleimani leading, never wearing a flak jacket.

“Soleimani has taught us that death is the beginning of life, not the end of life,” one Iraqi militia commander said.