TEHRAN- It is good that when children come into this world, nobody knows what destiny awaits them and what mission they undertake in their future life. Also, nobody knows what great mission the history has assigned them to do.  

This was also true about Moses the prophet whom Pharaoh made every effort to kill but failed. That was the time that short-sighted persons and superficialists believed that Moses and his followers were left with no option to survive as they were trapped between the roaring waves of the sea in the front and Pharaoh’s large army from the behind. But it was Moses who finally eliminated Pharaoh and his soldiers in the sea when he received the command from God to strike the Nile River with his staff …. and miracle happened; the sea was divided and Moses and his followers walked through it.  

The summer of 1953 was pleasant for Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States. CIA’s agents in Tehran joined the mercenaries of Britain, which was no longer the great, and accomplished the Ajax operation in Iran successfully. Mosadeq’s government was overthrown by a coup d'état, and the craven king was given the crown. If CIA chief Allen Dulles had had any idea about the future, he would have sent a team of his agents to Iran again, but this time not to Tehran, but to Qanat Malik, a village in the central desert of Iran in Kerman province where a son was born to Mashhadi Hassan and his wife Fatimah on March 21, 1958. But neither Eisenhower nor Dulles, not even the parents of the newly born baby knew about the mission the infant was to accomplish in the years to come. He was the third child in the family and was named Qassem. It was an appropriate name because Qassem means to “share” and this child mission in the future was to share things. 

World is home to marvels which are beyond human being’s understanding like when unrelated and remote things on the globe reach together in one point. When in 1963 an officer from SAVAK (Intelligence Organization and National Security) mockingly asked Ruhollah Khomeini where his soldiers were, he confidently responded “my soldiers are in cradles”. Imam Khomeini’s response might have been amusing to that doomed officer from the intelligence service but he is not to blame. Interestingly, many of Imam Khomeini’s future loyalists were still child or infant at the time, that some of them were martyred later. For example, Soleimani was five years old that day; Mehdi Bakeri and Esmail Daghayeghi nine; Hassan Bagheri and Mohammad Ebrahim Hemmat eight; Hossein Kharrazi was six; Ahmad Kazemi, Mehdi Zeinoddin and Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam four; and Mahmoud Kaveh and Ali Hashemi two. These children lived in different cities and villages far from each other. They were so scattered that no one could imagine that one day they would be united and shine together.  

These children were the commanders of Khomeini's army. Many of his soldiers had yet to be born. We said commander and soldier! Let us clarify the meaning of these two words right now. Do you know why the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Quds Force, whose name made the enemy tremble, always called himself a soldier and had requested to write “Soldier Qassem” on his tombstone?  Last year, an American news outlet wrote with deep hatred that Soleimani had linked militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen (also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Palestine) to a strategic alliance and thereby turned the Quds Force into a kind of NATO.

Qassem changed the fate of the region and even the world. He was called "the shadow commander ", "the crusher of ISIS" and "the strongest man in the Middle East". And the commanders of the American army were jealous of him. But he called himself a soldier, because he was a true student of the Imam Khomeini school of thought. Khomeini was the founder of the revolution, the man of the century, the politician of the era, the changer of the world and history, but when one of his disciples addressed him that "We are all your soldiers, we are all on your command”, he responded simply from the bottom of his heart that "I am not your soldier nor are you mine. All of us are God's soldiers, Insha Allah (if God wills)".

There are definitely many good people on the earth and we have seen a lot of them. Perhaps we are good people because we do good things sometimes. We share some of our happiness, time, money, etc. with others. Some might be better than others and use their strong will to be good and to do good. For example, when they see somebody is being subjected to injustice, they enter the scene and help him. Qassem's mission was to spread peace, security, bring happiness and smiles, and also sow fear and anxiety (in the heart of enemies). What made Qassem distinct from other good people was that he was not self-satisfied. Self-satisfaction is not always a good thing. He was not self-satisfied with his achievements; he wanted peace, security and smiles for all people in the world, not just for the people of Qanat Malek, Kermanis and Iranians. It didn't matter to him what language these men, women and children spoke, what religion they believed in and how they had been geographically divided.  For him security, peace and smile were the rights of all, and fear and anxiety for all those who had denied the others from these rights. 

This is where we can see two images of Qassem; one image softer than silk, more tenderhearted than a five-year-old child who is laughing at the bottom of his heart and crying like the clouds; and the other like a thunderbolt that has been given the mission by the Almighty God to kill tyrannical and bloodthirsty persons by his hand and send them all to hell.

Obviously, the crowded and dark streets are too little to be named after Qassem but one day a big and bright star will be discovered and it will be named after him. Qassem’s name will last forever and lucky are those who will see his bright eyes again in the Day of Judgment and he will share light with them.