Tehran: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei has renewed his promise of revenge in response to the United States’ assassination of Qassem Soleimani during a meeting with the top general’s family some two weeks before the first anniversary of his killing.
Khamenei said on Wednesday the US will pay for the President Donald Trump-ordered drone strike that killed the commander near the Baghdad airport on January 3.
According to the supreme leader, the millions of people who marched across Iran following Soleimani’s assassination delivered a “harsh slap” in the face of the US.
Dozens of missiles launched by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on two bases in Iraq housing US troops – that caused no fatalities – after Soleimani was buried in his hometown of Kerman were another slap, Khamenei said.
“However, the harsher slap includes overcoming the empty hegemony of arrogance,” he said during the meeting in Tehran, which was also attended by organisers of commemorations for the first anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination.
But Khamenei said such responses are separate from retaliation on those who ordered the killing and those who carried it out.
“They must know that whenever possible, at the appropriate time, they must face revenge,” he said.
