IRGC: Strategic revenge to end US presence in region

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps says the strategic revenge that will follow the United States’ assassination of senior IRGC Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani will surely end Washington’s regional presence.

According to Press TV, Major General Hossein Salami, the Chief Commander of the IRGC, which serves as Iran’s elite defense force, made the remarks to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting news agency on Saturday.

“Lieutenant General Soleimani’s assassination is the beginning of the end of the US’s presence in the region,” Salami said.

On Friday, US drones struck a convoy carrying Lieutenant General Soleimani, the Commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Second-in-Command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror group, on the Baghdad International Airport road.

Lieutenant General Soleimani would cooperate side by side with the PMU in the face of the most deadly terrorist outfits to ever afflict the region, including the Daesh Takfiri group.

The Islamic Republic has denounced Soleimani’s assassination as “an act of state terrorism,” saying it belies Washington’s claim of fighting terrorism in the region.

Tehran has said it reserves the right to respond in kind, and pledged not to abandon its contribution to regional counterterrorism efforts.

Salami said the assassination gave rise to such “vengeance and hatred” across the Muslim world that “naturally produced new energy for a struggle against the Americans not only on one spot, but on an extensive front.”

The atrocity negated all of the US’s previous efforts at representing itself as a friend of nations and mobilizing free and independent regional nations against their ruling establishments.

“Soleimani’s assassination caused Washington's policy in the Islamic world to break down,” he said.

ME