On the Brink

MAJOR GENERAL QASEM SOLEIMANI WAS BORN IN 1957 to a self-described “peasant” family in Kerman, the sunbaked province in southeastern Iran famed for its pistachios, rose water and hospitable inhabitants. Family debts forced him to leave school and earn a living as a construction worker at age 13. By his late teens, Soleimani was swept up in the country’s growing political fervor that culminated in one of the greatest geopolitical earthquakes of the past half-century: the 1979 revolution that replaced a U.S.-allied monarchy, led by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, with a viscerally anti-American theocracy, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Like young men from poor families throughout the world, Soleimani achieved upward mobility by joining the military. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was set up to supersede a national army Khomeini did not trust, and Soleimani cut his teeth as a soldier by helping to ruthlessly crush a rebellion of Kurds in northwest Iran, an estimated 10,000 of whom were killed. In 1981, he was among hundreds of thousands dispatched to counter the invasion of Iran by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Soleimani served mostly on the front line, distinguishing himself as a leader, then went on to confront drug traffickers in Kerman, the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and, reportedly, antigovernment protests inside Iran.

But Soleimani came into his own after the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which flank Iran. Soleimani was tasked with sabotaging the American