Rouhani: Iran reserves right to avenge Soleimani death
President Hassan Rouhani said Iran will avenge the US assassination of its top commander Qasem Soleimani and will continue to seek the ouster of American forces from the region.
President Hassan Rouhani has again vowed revenge on the United States for last year's killing of Iran’s most powerful general, Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the country’s overseas military operations unit known as the Quds Force.
Accusing US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of the “savage assassination,” Rouhani warned Dec. 29 that Iranians “won’t let them get away” and have “every right to avenge the blood of their popular commander.”
The Iranian president gave Soleimani full credit for flushing the Islamic State out of neighboring Iraq and Syria, and explained his killing as a sign of the US government’s unease with his achievements against the terror group, which he said was “nurtured” by the West and Zionists and was seeking to disrupt the Middle East.
Since the deadly Jan. 3 strike on Soleimani’s convoy in Baghdad, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly promised retaliation. In the immediate aftermath, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also Iran’s commander in chief, ordered a ballistic missile attack on the US-run Ain al-Asad airbase in neighboring Iraq. “But that was just a small slap in the face,” Rouhani said during his last 2020 address to the Iranian Cabinet.
