BAGHDAD — Ask any American intelligence analyst or military officer and they’ll tell you that Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Qods Force, is a terrorist. He’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and worked assiduously to destabilize Iraq in the wake of its liberation to signal to those across the region that American intervention was more a curse than blessing.

Ask many Iranians about Soleimani and they will describe him as a hero. Many of Iran’s leaders talk, but Soleimani does. And while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei lectures from a chair behind a flower-decked dais, Soleimani drinks tea with Iranian soldiers and the proxies Iran supports in the field.