Newsweek/ here
"... Then the text message was passed to the American commander. "General Petraeus," it began, "you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan." Within days it was Suleimani who brokered the truce....
What surprised Petraeus and Crocker was not the Iranian's role. They knew that already. It was the blunt confidence with which Suleimani stated it. As the head of the infamous Quds Force, he commands all the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operations outside Iran's borders—whether covert, overt, or outright terrorist........
But today Suleimani doesn't seem to be paying as much attention to Iraq as he once did. For the last nine months, ever since apparent election fraud in Iran sparked mass protests and continuing unrest, the head of the Quds Force has been drawn back into the treacherous politics of his own country. And what he tries to do in Iraq—indeed, the success or failure of its democratic experiment—may well be a factor of his success or failure in Iran.
According to people who have followed Suleimani closely and prefer to remain anonymous, the spymaster and many other senior figures in the Quds Force actually supported the presidential challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, against incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Leader's anointed favorite. But because of Suleimani's record fighting the regime's enemies abroad, he still has Khamenei's confidence ......"
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