Esmail Ghaani
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Position: Commander
Association: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – The Quds Force
Loyalty: Supreme Leader of Iran
Most Notorious Crimes:
- Forming a network of militias in Iraq responsible for killing +600 Iraqi civilians (2018 – present)
- Supporting the Assad regime in killing, displacing, forcibly disappearing and/or torturing +14 million Syrians (2011 – present)
- Training, funding, and arming sectarian strifes through Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen
Esmail Ghaani has been the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of the Iranian Quds Force since January 2020. He is the successor to Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad.
Ghaani received his training in a military garrison in Tehran in 1981, currently known as the Imam Ali garrison. He fought in the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988 where he became acquainted with Soleimani and eventually began collaborating with him in the Quds Force. Ghaani then became the deputy commander of the Quds Force in 1997 when Soleimani became the force’s chief commander.
The Quds Force is mainly responsible for extraterritorial operations. Under Soleimani’s leadership, it strengthened and/or forged new alliances with militias and authoritarian regimes across the Middle East to maintain and expand Iranian influence in the Middle East at any price, resulting in millions of casualties across the region. The activities of the IRGC expanded to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, respectively, in support of militias, the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels, among others.
