When appointing Qaani to succeed Soleimani as QF commander, Supreme Leader Khamenei said the Force’s program “will be unchanged from the time of [Qaani’s] predecessor.” Soleimani personally thanked Qaani as “my dear friend” in his last will. Soleimani has had some big shoes to fill. Qaani has not proven to be a charismatic speaker or figure like Soleimani.
Qaani’s first major operation as Quds Force commander happened in northern Syria when he pushed the IRGC and its proxies to expand involvement in an assault in coordination with Damascus and Moscow into insurgent-held Idlib. The assault ground to a halt after a bombing killed dozens of Turkish soldiers stationed in Syria, leading to a massive Turkish counter-attack. Turkey bombed Guard Corps positions.
In Iraq, in the absence of Soleimani, who exerted so much influence in the country, Qaani has faced competition from other Islamic Republic intelligence agencies like the Ministry of Intelligence and the center of powers seeking to carve out its influence in Iraq by sponsoring paramilitary groups. Lacking familiarity with Iraqi militias and knowledge of Arabic, Qaani has relied on Iraj Masjedi, Iranian Ambassador to Iraq and a senior Qods Force officer, to handle Qods Force meetings in Iraq.
Qaani has fared better in other battlefields. In early 2021, Yemeni Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, demonstrated the ability to maintain barrages of missiles and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia. These capabilities are owed to years of Quds Force-directed investment. Ansar Allah also expanded their ground assaults.
Qaani was also able to claim some victory in the 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas, which demonstrated the efficacy of the force’s long-running support of Hamas, giving it the ability to maintain rocket strikes against Israel. In a public address, he said, “I’d advise all Zionists to go back and repurchase the houses they sold in Europe, the US and elsewhere before those houses become more expensive than they are today.” Qaani added that Palestinian missiles did not target Israeli infrastructure “because it will not take long for Palestinians to use these facilities.”
At another event in April 2021, Qaani vowed that “today, Resistance Fronts constituting Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the children of Resistance...are everyday undertaking a fundamental action against enemies of Islam and the Revolution, and America and bloodthriisty Zionist regime and will continue this path…until reaching the global government of the Imam of Time [Mahdi],” referring to a belief in Shiism that the Mahdi, or Messiah, would return from his occultation one day to herald the apocalypse. Qaani has acknowledged Khamenei as “the representative of the Imam of Time [Mahdi] on earth”; that acknowledgement is one of the foundations of Guardianship of the Jurisconsult (velayat-e faqih), which is enshrined in the Islamic Republic’s constitution.