Qasem Soleimani’s Master Plan: How One General Almost Destroyed Israel

Introduction: The Shadow Commander

He was the most powerful military figure in the Middle East. More influential than any president, prime minister, or general. He commanded no conventional army, wore no state uniform in public, and operated almost entirely in the shadows.

Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force from 1998 to 2020, designed and executed a strategy that nearly encircled Israel with hostile forces on every border. Western intelligence agencies called him the “Shadow Commander.” Arab leaders feared him. Iran revered him.

On January 3, 2020, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone killed Soleimani outside Baghdad International Airport. He was 62 years old.

But the question that matters most for the Middle East — and for biblical prophecy — is this: Did his master plan survive him?

The Man

Soleimani was born in 1957 in Kerman province, southeastern Iran — one of the poorest regions of the country. He had almost no formal education. He worked construction as a teenager. There was nothing in his background that suggested he would become the most powerful irregular warfare commander in modern history.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution radicalized him, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) forged him. Soleimani fought on the front lines as a young IRGC commander, earning a reputation for tactical brilliance and personal courage that bordered on recklessness. He was wounded multiple times. His men worshipped him.

In 1998, Supreme Leader Khamenei appointed Soleimani to lead the Quds Force — the IRGC’s elite external operations division, responsible for all Iranian military and intelligence activities outside Iran’s borders. The name tells you everything: Quds means “Jerusalem.” The force was named for its ultimate objective.

For the next 22 years, Soleimani would build the most sophisticated proxy warfare network in modern history.

The Strategy: The Ring of Fire

Soleimani’s strategy was elegant in its logic and terrifying in its ambition. Analysts call it the “ring of fire” — surrounding Israel with armed proxy forces on every border so that:

  1. Any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would trigger a devastating multi-front war
  2. Israel would be forced to divert military resources in every direction simultaneously
  3. The proxies would fight the first war, keeping Iran’s conventional military intact
  4. The cumulative pressure would eventually break Israel’s military capacity or political will

The Architecture

North — Lebanon (Hezbollah)

Hezbollah was Soleimani’s masterpiece. Under his direction, the organization transformed from a guerrilla militia into a military force more powerful than most national armies:

  • Arsenal grew from thousands to an estimated 130,000-150,000 rockets and missiles
  • Acquired precision-guided munitions capable of hitting specific Israeli targets
  • Developed sophisticated intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities
  • Built a tunnel network along the Lebanese-Israeli border
  • Maintained 20,000+ full-time fighters with military training rivaling conventional forces

Soleimani personally managed the relationship with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, visiting Lebanon regularly despite Israeli intelligence efforts to track him.

South — Gaza (Hamas/PIJ)

Overcoming the Sunni-Shia divide was Soleimani’s strategic achievement. He built relationships with Hamas’s military leadership (not its political wing, which maintained ties to Qatar and Turkey) and with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller but ideologically closer ally.

Under Soleimani’s direction:
– Hamas received rocket technology, manufacturing expertise, and military training
– Fighters were brought to Iran and Lebanon for advanced combat training
– Funding reached $70-100 million annually
– Tunnel construction accelerated beneath Gaza and across the Egyptian border

East — Iraq (Shia Militias)

Iraq was Soleimani’s political triumph. After the U.S. invasion of 2003 created a power vacuum, Soleimani filled it. He:

  • Created and funded dozens of Shia militia groups
  • Embedded IRGC advisors in Iraqi military and intelligence
  • Helped engineer the political dominance of Iran-aligned parties in parliament
  • Turned Iraq into the geographic linchpin of the land bridge connecting Iran to Syria and Lebanon

The DIA’s 2019 Iran Military Power report noted that these proxies gave Iran strategic depth without committing its own conventional forces.

Northeast — Syria

When the Syrian Civil War threatened to topple Bashar al-Assad — Iran’s only Arab state ally — Soleimani personally took command. He deployed IRGC officers, coordinated Hezbollah fighters, recruited Afghan and Pakistani Shia volunteers, and convinced Russia to intervene militarily.

The result: Assad survived, and Iran gained a permanent military presence in Syria — directly north of Israel’s Golan Heights, creating a new front line.

Southeast — Yemen (Houthis)

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The Houthis were Soleimani’s most strategic investment. By arming a rebel group in Yemen with Iranian missiles and drones, he threatened:
– Saudi Arabia’s southern border
– The Bab el-Mandeb Strait (12% of global trade)
– International shipping lanes vital to Israel’s Red Sea commerce
– Israel itself, from 1,500+ miles away

How Close Did It Come?

By late 2019 — just weeks before his assassination — Soleimani’s ring of fire was arguably at its peak:

  • Hezbollah possessed its largest-ever arsenal, including precision-guided munitions
  • Hamas had rebuilt after the 2014 Gaza War and was training for large-scale infiltration operations
  • Iraqi militias controlled significant political and military power in Baghdad
  • Syria hosted Iranian bases and forward-deployed IRGC units near the Golan
  • Houthis had demonstrated the ability to strike Saudi oil infrastructure 500+ miles from Yemen
  • Iran’s ballistic missile program had the largest inventory in the Middle East

The ODNI’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment confirms: “Iran possesses the largest missile force in the Middle East with close-range, short-range, and medium-range ballistic missiles.”

Israel was encircled. A single trigger — an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a border incident that escalated — could have activated the entire network simultaneously.

This was Soleimani’s design. Not a single decisive blow, but an overwhelming convergence of threats from every direction.

The Assassination and Its Aftermath

January 3, 2020

Soleimani flew from Damascus to Baghdad. U.S. intelligence tracked his movements. At approximately 1:00 AM local time, an MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles at his vehicle convoy as it left Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was killed instantly, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah — Iraq’s most powerful Iran-backed militia.

The killing was authorized by President Trump under the justification that Soleimani was actively planning “imminent attacks” against American personnel.

Iran’s response was measured: a ballistic missile strike on Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on January 8, 2020. Over 100 U.S. service members suffered traumatic brain injuries, but no Americans were killed. Many analysts believe Iran calibrated the strike to avoid triggering a full U.S. military response.

The Successor Problem

Soleimani was replaced by Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, a long-serving IRGC officer who lacked Soleimani’s charisma, relationships, and strategic vision.

The difference was immediately apparent:
– Soleimani had personal relationships with every proxy leader across the region
– Qaani struggled to maintain the same level of coordination
– Several proxy groups began acting more independently
– The seamless integration that Soleimani maintained between Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and Yemen began to fray

Did the Plan Survive?

The answer is: partially.

What survived:
– The institutional infrastructure — weapons pipelines, training programs, financial networks
– The ideological commitment — “Death to Israel” remains official policy
– The proxy organizations themselves — Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, Houthis, Iraqi militias all continued operating
– Iran’s missile and drone programs continued advancing

What didn’t survive:
– The personal coordination. Soleimani’s genius was holding disparate groups together. No successor replicated this.
– The strategic discipline. October 7 may have been an example of a proxy acting without the restraint Soleimani would have imposed.
– The ring of fire itself. By late 2024, Israel had:
– Devastated Hamas’s military infrastructure in Gaza
– Killed Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and much of its senior leadership
– Damaged Hezbollah’s arsenal significantly
– Struck Iranian assets in Syria

The ring of fire that took Soleimani 22 years to build was substantially degraded in 14 months of Israeli military operations following October 7.

Biblical Perspective: The Folly of Plans Against Israel

Scripture has a consistent pattern when it comes to those who plot against Israel:

Haman’s Gallows

In the book of Esther, Haman built gallows to hang Mordecai. He plotted the genocide of all Jews in the Persian Empire. The result? Haman was hanged on his own gallows. The people he planned to destroy were saved.

Soleimani built a ring of fire to destroy Israel. The result? The ring of fire triggered a response that destroyed much of the infrastructure he spent decades building.

Pharaoh’s Army

Pharaoh pursued Israel to the Red Sea with the most powerful army in the ancient world. God parted the sea for Israel and closed it on Pharaoh’s army.

The ODNI’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment notes that Iran attacked Israel directly in April and October 2024. Both attacks involved hundreds of missiles and drones. Both were overwhelmingly intercepted — by Israeli, American, and even Jordanian and Saudi defenses working in concert. A coalition formed to defend Israel that would have been unthinkable five years earlier.

Balaam’s Intended Curse

In Numbers 22-24, Balaam was hired to curse Israel. Instead, God turned every intended curse into a blessing:

“How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce whom the LORD has not denounced?” (Numbers 23:8)

Iran’s strategy of encirclement inadvertently accelerated the Abraham Accords, deepened U.S.-Israel defense cooperation, and exposed the true nature of Iran’s proxy network to the world.

The Pattern

The pattern is unmistakable across Scripture:

“No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.” (Isaiah 54:17)

This is not a guarantee that Israel will never suffer. October 7 proved otherwise. But it is a promise that the ultimate purpose of those who scheme against Israel will fail. Soleimani’s master plan — brilliant, patient, decades in the making — is a modern illustration of this ancient pattern.

The Prophetic Dimension

Soleimani’s strategy has an eerie resonance with Ezekiel 38-39.

Ezekiel describes a coalition — led by Gog, of the land of Magog — that includes Persia (Iran) and comes against Israel from multiple directions. The coalition attacks when Israel is “living securely” (38:8). And God destroys it — not through Israeli military might, but through divine intervention: “torrential rains, hailstones, fire, and sulfur” (38:22).

Was Soleimani’s ring of fire a precursor to Ezekiel’s prophecy? We can’t say with certainty. What we can say is that the strategic logic — surrounding Israel with forces from multiple nations and attacking simultaneously — aligns with what Ezekiel described 2,600 years ago.

And we can say that the prophetic outcome is clear: the coalition fails. Not because Israel is stronger, but because God intervenes.

Conclusion: The General and the God

Qasem Soleimani was, by any measure, one of the most effective military strategists of the 21st century. He built an empire of proxies that no single general before him had accomplished. He came closer than anyone since 1973 to creating the conditions for Israel’s destruction.

And he was killed by a drone he never saw, on a road in Baghdad, at 1:00 AM.

The God who told Abraham “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3) is not a spectator of Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is the sovereign director of it.

Soleimani had a master plan. God has a master plan too. And twenty-two years of proxy warfare, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives could not override the purposes of the One who declares the end from the beginning.

“The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” (Psalm 33:10-11)

Further Reading

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