A senior Iranian military official reiterated this on Friday Your country wants to “kill” former US President Donald Trump to avenge the death of General Qasem Soleimani, killed in a US operation in 2020.
“Hopefully we can kill Trump, (former US Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo and (former US Army Central Command Middle East chief Kenneth) McKenzie, as well as the military officials who ordered the assassination of Soleimani.”, General Amirali Hajizadeh said on television.
“We are already able to reach US ships at a distance of 2,000 kilometers” with missiles, added the general, who leads the Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Force, Iran’s ideological army.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also promised in January to “avenge” the “assassination” of Soleimani.
Head of the Quds Force, the international branch of the Revolutionary Guards, Soleimani was one of his country’s most respectable military leaders. He was killed in Baghdad in a US operation in January 2020.
Trump said in his day that he ordered the attack response to a series of attacks against US interests in Iraq. Five days later, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a US airbase in Iraq with no casualties.
For his supporters and his detractors, Soleimani was the key man of Iranian influence in the Middle East, where he strengthened Tehran’s diplomatic weight, especially in Iraq and Syria, two countries where the United States is militarily engaged.
“For Shiites in the Middle East, it’s a mix of James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga.” wrote former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in his portrayal of Soleimani for a 2017 issue of US Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
“For the West it is (…) responsible for exporting the Islamic revolution from Iranto support terrorists (…) to wage Iran’s wars abroad,” he adds.
After staying out of the public eye for decades, Soleimani began appearing on the media’s front pages following the start of the war in Syria in 2011, where Iran, the Shiite heavyweight in the region, aids the regime of President Bashar al Assad.
It has appeared in battlefield photos, in documentaries, and has even been depicted in an animated film and music video. He was a star and loved in his country of him.
Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at the West
The Islamic Republic’s ballistics programs worry the Westwho accuses the country of wanting to increase the range of its missiles and to destabilize the Middle East and Israel, Tehran’s sworn enemy.
On Saturday, state television aired footage of the launch of “a new Paveh cruise missile with a range of 1,650 kilometres.
In November, Iran produced for the first time a hypersonic ballistic missile capable of penetrating all defense systems. “This missile can counter air defense shields and can pass through all missile defense systems,” military sources told the Fars news agency.
A hypersonic missile develops speeds exceeding Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), a around 6,000 km/h.
According to the Iranian military official, “this missile targeting enemy anti-missile systems represents a great generational leap with the missiles already known”.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.