Tehran has not forgotten. A senior Iranian military official, General Amirali Hajizadeha, claimed on Friday evening on television that his country was still seeking revenge for Washington’s elimination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, by threatening the life of the ex-White House tenant. . “We hope we can kill Trump, (former US Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo and (Kenneth) McKenzie (former head of US Army Central Command in the Middle East), as well as the military officials who gave the order to assassinate Soleimani,” he said.
“We are now able to hit American ships at a distance of 2,000 km” with missiles, said the man who heads the Aerospace Force of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army.
Publicized shootings
The ballistic programs of the Islamic Republic worry Westerners, who accuse the country of wanting to increase the range of its missiles and destabilize the Middle East and Israel, sworn enemy of Tehran. On Saturday, state television broadcast images of the firing of a “new Paveh cruise missile with a range of 1,650 km”, manufactured by the Revolutionary Guards.
Former head of the Quds Force, in charge of the Revolutionary Guards’ external operations, Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in Baghdad in a US raid in January 2020. Trump said at the time that he ordered the strike in response to a number of attacks against American interests in Iraq.
Five days later, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a US airbase in Iraq that housed US troops. No US soldiers were killed, but Washington said dozens of people suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of the blasts.