ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds force and Tehran’s ‘eminence grise’ in Iraq, has resurfaced in a new photo, pictured alongside the leader of a powerful Iraqi Shia organization.
Despite a shadowy role in Iraq’s affairs going back years, Suleimani had been something of an invisible man in the upheavals the country has endured.
That has changed, however, as Tehran attempts to assert its role as Iraq’s defender in the face of onslaughts by Islamic State fighters. Iran insists that its assistance was the only thing that prevented Baghdad falling to ISIS fighters earlier this year.
Tehran has also sought to play up the importance of its aid to the Kurdistan Region, which faced an ISIS offensive in August, until the US launched air strikes to halt a militant advance on Erbil.
Earlier this month, photos surfaced on social media showing the silver-haired Suleimani alongside Peshmerga soldiers of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the main Kurdish parties, which has good relations with Iran.
The latest photo again shows a relaxed Suleimani, this time in conversation with Hadi al-Ameri, head of the Badr Organisation, the political successor to the powerful Badr Brigades militia, widely seen as an agent of Tehran and led by Iranian officers.
The photo, on pro-Badr websites, gave the location merely as “at one of the main battlefields of Iraq".
The new photo emerged as Iraq’s new interior minister, Mohammed Gabban, also a senior member of the Badr Organsiation, criticized US air strikes against ISIS as ineffective. He was speaking at a press conference in the Shia holy city of Kerbala.
