Iran continues to demand revenge against the United States for the assassination a year ago of its powerful commander Qasem Soleimani, the loss has not diminished Iranian influence over its allied militias in a growing Middle East.
“Any action taken by the enemy against us will be a response with a reciprocal, decisive and firm blow,” the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hosein Salamí, said on Saturday.
Washington fears retaliatory action by Tehran coinciding with the first anniversary of Soleimani’s death in a selective U.S. bombing on January 3, 2020 near Baghdad airport.
Although a week later the Revolutionary Guard attacked with missiles a military base in Iraq with the presence of American troops, the final revenge is supposedly not yet executed.
To honor the memory of Soleimani, hundreds of people gathered today in front of his grave in southern Kerman, his hometown. After patiently waiting their turn, they touched the tomb, covered with flowers, and prayed during a ceremony in the cemetery and at a nearby mosque.
His image is ubiquitous on posters and murals on the streets of both Kerman and Tehran, which also feature the number two Iraqi People’s Crowd militia, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, who died in the same bombing a year ago.
Soleimani, elevated to martyrdom and hero in Iran and other countries in the region such as Iraq and Syria, was the commander of the Quds Force, in charge of the overseas missions of the Revolutionary Guard.
His legacy remains firm
Soleimaní’s assassination dealt a severe blow to Iran and its strategy of regional influence, but a year later there are no major changes in Iran’s policy of supporting allied armed movements such as the Iraqi People’s Crowd. the Lebanese Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas.
“As a good commander, he informed his colleagues of his plans and projects, he prepared them to continue their work,” international affairs expert Sabah Zanganeh, who has previously held the post of Deputy, Deputy Minister and Representative of Iran to the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.
According to the analyst, the Quds Force’s strategy “is not designed by a single person,” so Soleimaní’s death instead of influencing his plans “motivated his members more to achieve their goals. , including the withdrawal of American troops from the region. “
Iran leads the so-called Axis of Resistance against the US. UU. And Israel, backed by the Quds Force, which includes Syria and the aforementioned Popular Crowd groups, Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Yemen’s Hutu rebels.
“There is no sign of a breakdown of his plans or a setback of his forces,” stressed Zanganeh, who pointed out that this strategy is “long-term, has not been influenced (by the death of Soleimani) and continues in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Yemen. “
His successor in command of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, in fact stressed yesterday that the path drawn by Soleimani for this military corps and the Axis of Resistance “will not change, despite the perverse acts of the United States.” .
At the cemetery today in Kerman, Aqdas Jozai, a 65-year-old woman dressed in chador, told Efe that her death was “very hard and painful”, but that now “they are all Qasem Soleimani, men on the ground to meet its objectives “.
The awkward American presence
The American troops present in Iraq and in numerous military bases of the Persian Gulf, among other neighboring places in Iran, are the main objective and its retirement, the posthumous revenge by the assassination of Soleimani.
“The road to harsh revenge is the collapse of American political dominance over the region and the expulsion of U.S. from the area,” according to the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guard.
American interests, mainly the fortified green zone of Baghdad and Iraqi military bases with their troops deployed, are in the spotlight and have been targeted in the last year of frequent projectile attacks.
Washington has decided to reduce the number of its troops in Iraqi territory, where in less than two weeks only 2,500 U.S. troops are expected to remain.
Also Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in the country’s important decisions, has urged in a recent speech on the Axis of Resistance to “fulfill the duty to expel the United States from the region “.
“Both those who ordered his assassination and those who carried it out must know that we will take revenge at the right time, at the right time,” warned Khamenei, who a year ago called the first retaliatory action by the government. Iran as a simple “slap.”
The region on alert
Therefore, in the face of fear of further reprisals on the occasion of the anniversary, the United States has withdrawn the only aircraft carrier of the Navy that was still deployed in the Middle East and flew over the Persian Gulf this week with a group of bombers B-52 in an attempt to deter.
These moves have been called “provocation” by Tehran in a letter to the UN Security Council, which stresses that “such warlike tendencies can escalate the situation to an alarming level and the US will be the only one responsible “.
For Salamí, who assured that Iran “is ready to react to any aggression”, the United States is trying with these measures to “escape the dangerous nightmare” that began after the assassination of Soleimani.
Revenge has also been taken to court. Iran’s judiciary defends that the killing was an act of terrorism and a violation of international law and recently reported that it has identified 48 people involved in it.
In addition, last June, Iran issued an arrest warrant against US President Donald Trump and 35 other politico-military officials, although the international police agency Interpol did not accept the request.
Analyst and former official Zanganeh indicated that Iran “does not react impulsively” and does not disclose the date of its possible retaliation against the other party.
“Washington must withdraw its troops from the region or attend to incidents that could be caused by Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and other resistance militias in the region,” he postulated.