Speaking at a commemoration ceremony held for the martyrs of holy shrines at Tehran’s Milad Tower Conference Hall, Brigadier General Esmaeil Gha'ani said, “The commemoration of Martyr Soleimani means the commemoration of all the martyrs of the resistance [movement] and the Islamic world,”
The commander said Iran would never forget the martyrdom of General Soleimani and his comrades, adding that the Islamic Republic knows those behind the targeted assassination of the top Iranian anti-terror commander, including former US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The criminal Trump and his accomplices, such as Pompeo, are well known to us. Martyr Soleimani had repeatedly humiliated Pompeo in the region and they thought they won by assassinating him,” Gha'ani said. “They are under the magnifying glass of all the free people of the world and they will not be safe.”
Stressing that the Islamic Republic will take revenge for General Soleimani’s assassination in its own way, the IRGC commander said the soaring anti-Washington sentiments in Iraq and said Tehran aspired for the withdrawal of US troops from the region but achieved more than that when Iraq expelled American forces in effect.
"Your exit from the region was part of our plans, but above that, you are now being expelled from Iraq as the noble Iraqi nation will not tolerate the remaining 2,000 of your forces in their country," he added.
The US terrorist forces assassinated Lt. General Qassem Soleimani, who was among the key figures in the fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq in the past several years, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in an airstrike ordered by former US President Donald Trump at Baghdad’s international airport on January 3, 2020.
Five days later, in a military operation codenamed Operation Martyr Soleimani, the IRGC launched a volley of ballistic missiles at the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s western province of Anbar and at another airbase in Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Iran said the missile strike was only a “first slap” in its process of taking “hard revenge” and that it would not rest under the US military leaves the Middle East in disgrace.
MNA/PressTV