- [Narrator] Major General Qasem Soleimani,
killed in a U.S. drone strike on January 3rd,
was commander of a clandestine arm
of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
known as the Quds Force.
- Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks
on American diplomats and military personnel,
but we caught him in the act and terminated him.
- [Narrator] The Quds Force is in charge
of the IRGC's international activities
and specializes in guerrilla warfare and armed insurgency.
The killing of General Soleimani
marks a major escalation in the U.S.' conflict with Iran,
but the U.S.' history with the Quds Force
goes all the way back to the Iranian Revolution.
Experts say Iran has used it
to gain influence beyond its borders,
deter enemies from attacking Iran itself,
and disrupt the efforts of America and its allies
in the Middle East.
- So the Quds Force is the arm
of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran
that is charged with exporting the revolution.
Quds means Jerusalem, and they want to see their banners
flying over Jerusalem, and so the Quds Force,
being the external operations arm,
takes that as its name and as its principal objective.
The Quds Force doesn't have combat units of its own.
It doesn't put brigades or divisions on the ground.
It works to train, to raise, recruit, and train and equip
and then lead proxies who do most of the fighting.
- [Narrator] The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC
was established after the Iranian Revolution in 1979
as a force to defend Iran
against internal and external threats.
Experts say the Quds Force was later formed
during or after the Iran-Iraq War
as the country's de facto affairs branch.
In the 1980s, the IRGC deployed forces abroad
to cultivate one of its first allied militias,
the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, then known as the Islamic Jihad Organization,
took credit for the 1983 and 1984 bombings
of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.
In 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
announced sanctions against a Hezbollah operative
accused of carrying out a 1994 bombing in Argentina.
In 2015, another Hezbollah operative was arrested
for a 1996 bombing that killed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
In 1997 or 1998, Iran-Iraq War veteran Qasem Soleimani
became the commander of the Quds Force.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003,
Soleimani built up opposition forces in Iraq
and across the Middle East
by training and arming militia groups.
(pleasant mallet percussion music)
- The most notorious thing that the Quds Force did
in Iraq was to provide their Iraqi proxies
with a new type of anti-tank weapon
called an explosively formed penetrator or EFP,
and with that device, among other things,
the Quds Force is responsible
for killing hundreds of American servicemen and women
in Iraq and wounding thousands.
- [Narrator] The Trump administration
said that Iran-backed militias were responsible
for the deaths of 608 U.S. troops in Iraq
between 2003 and 2011.
- We understood that they were recruiting,
training, and equipping the Shia militias in Iraq,
but we chose to fight them in Iraq,
and we chose not to take the war to Iran itself.
- [Narrator] Instead, the U.S. issued sanctions
against Quds Force leaders, including General Soleimani.
The Trump administration declared the IRGC
a terrorist organization in 2019.
After the U.S. carried out airstrikes
against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria,
supporters of an Iran-backed militia
tried to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
This culminated with the strike against General Soleimani
on January 3rd, 2020.
The attack on General Soleimani wasn't just strategic
but symbolic as well.
- Qasem Soleimani was a unique figure.
He was at the center
of many of the most important relationships
that the Quds Force had with its proxies.
There was a real cult of personality
that was built around him,
not just in the Quds Force and the IRGC,
but in Iran generally and among Shia in the region.
He has been replaced by his deputy, Esmail Ghaani,
who does not have anything like that charisma,
certainly does not have anything like that name recognition.
- [Narrator] The biggest question going forward
might be how effectively the new Quds Force commander
connects with the militia commanders
General Soleimani had cultivated in the Middle East.
- The organization is not going to collapse,
but it will change.
There will be a period of adjustment here
where they figure out how the world is gonna run for them
without Qasem Soleimani to run it.