The Guardian | Mohammad Ali Shabani: The Quds force leader had the status of national hero even among secular Iranians. His death could act as a rallying cry�

he US has assassinated Qassem Suleimani, the famed leader of Iran�s Quds force, alongside a senior commander of Iraq�s Popular Mobilisation Units, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. To grasp what may come next, it is vital to understand not only who these men were but also the system that produced them.

Nicknamed the �shadow commander� in the popular press, Suleimani spent his formative years on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein � who at the time enjoyed the support of western and Arab powers � was attempting to destroy the emerging Islamic Republic.

But few people remember that his first major mission as commander of the Quds force � the extraterritorial branch of Iran�s Revolutionary Guards � involved implicit coordination with the United States as the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were, and to some extent remain, a mutual enemy. That alliance of convenience ended in 2002 when the US president George W Bush notoriously branded Iran a member of the �axis of evil�.

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