Iran's 'invisible man' runs terror net: "If the United States or Israel attacks Iran, a key figure in unleashing the threatened retaliation by Tehran is a general in the Revolutionary Guards who until quite recently was little known, even to Western intelligence services.
Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who commands the Guards Corps' elite and largely clandestine al-Quds Force, has long been the invisible man in Iran's intelligence hierarchy and an enigma to the U.S. intelligence community that is one of his main adversaries.
He's hailed as a national hero in Iran but has rarely been seen in public.
Until recently the Americans and their allies knew little about him.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, who spent years operating undercover in the Middle East in the 1980s when Iran was conducting constant 'black operations' across the region, recalls that, although Suleimani was involved in these spying and assassination missions, he was 'pretty much unknown to U.S. intelligence.'
Giraldi said there was a file on the general at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., at that time 'but it was pretty much empty.'
These days, the Americans have come to appreciate how dangerous Suleiman is and how crucial a role he plays in Iran's growing power in the Middle East and its environs."
