Dubai – Masaader News
Iran promised to avenge of US, after a US air strike in Baghdad and killed Qassem Soleimani, Tehran’s most prominent military commander and the architect of its growing influence in the Middle East, according to Reuters.
Soleimani, a 62-year-old general who headed the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, was regarded as the second most powerful figure after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The overnight attack, authorized by US President Donald Trump, was a major escalation in a “shadow war” in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and American allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”
Trump said the United States was not seeking regime change in Iran, but that Tehran must end what he called its aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters.
President Hassan Rouhani said the killing would stiffen Iran’s resistance to the United States.