Tako: Most Dangerous People in the World

1: Qassem Suleimani

As the country most likely to spark a world war, Iran has to be considered the most dangerous country on the planet. And if you were looking for the most dangerous man in that most dangerous country, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone as ruthless and mysterious as Gen. Qassem Suleimani. Since Suleimani's promotion in the late 1990s to head the Quds Force — the combination special forces and CIA-styled group within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps — he's unleashed terror against U.S. forces in Iraq; and in 2012, expanded Tehran's military aid to Assad while becoming the focus of rumors over who will become Iran's next leader.

Suleimani many not be the general in charge of assisting the North Koreans with their missile program. Nor does he run the Iranian nuclear effort. But if Barack Obama or Bibi Netanyahu were to strike Iran's nuclear program, it'll be Suleimani and the Quds Force in charge of taking Iran's counterattacks beyond its borders, as Iran launches waves of commando and terrorist strikes against the U.S. and its allies across the region and the world. In 2008, while waging a guerrilla war by proxy against the United States in Iraq, Suleimani even texted Gen. David Petraeus, boasting about being in charge of "the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan." That was an exaggeration — Iranian policy is set by the Supreme National Security Council which includes Suleimani along with 19 other members — but not entirely false, either. His influential position may also serve as the launching pad for higher political aspirations. In 2012, Suleimani emerged as the center of media attention in Iran just in time for upcoming presidential elections in June. And as a prominent war veteran, he could be a unifying and formidable president during a period of heightened tensions with the United States.

Suleimani shows a history of "bold moves and military successes leading to overconfidence, miscalculations and sometimes risk-prone behavior which make him an aggressive and dangerous commander," Ali Alfoneh, who studies the Iranian military for the American Enterprise Institute, tells Danger Room. Born in 1957 to impoverished peasants, the general's military career was born during the Iran-Iraq War after becoming commander of the 41st Tharallah Division, where he was known as a charismatic leader who bade individual soldiers farewell while weeping, personally carrying out reconnaissance missions, and where he experienced the loss of "family members and most of his closest friends," Alfoneh says. That's not the kind of Iranian spy and terror chief you want to underestimate.

— Robert Beckhusen