DUBAI (Reuters) – The successor to the Iranian commander killed in a U.S. drone strike would suffer the same fate if he followed a similar path by killing Americans, the U.S. special representative for Iran said, according to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington blamed General Qassem Soleimani for masterminding attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. forces in the region. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Jan. 3 drone strike in Iraq after an escalation that began last month with missile strikes that killed an American contractor, which Washington blamed on an Iranian-aligned militia in Iraq. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran responded to the killing of Soleimani by launching missiles at U.S. targets in Iraq on Jan. 8, although no U.S. soldiers were killed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Soleimani\u2019s death, Tehran swiftly appointed Esmail Ghaani as the new head of the Quds Force, an elite unit in the Revolutionary Guards that handles actions abroad. Ghaani has pledged to pursue Soleimani\u2019s course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,\u201d U.S. envoy Brian Hook told the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said in the interview in Davos, Switzerland that Trump had long made it clear \u201cthat any attack on Americans or American interests would be met with a decisive response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t a new threat. The president has always said that he will always respond decisively to protect American interests,\u201d Hook said. \u201cI think the Iranian regime understands now that they cannot attack America and get away with it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After his appointment, Ghaani said he would \u201ccontinue in this luminous path\u201d taken by Soleimani and that the goal was to drive U.S. forces out of the region, Iran\u2019s long-stated policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S threat to kill Ghaani is a sign of \u201cgovernmental terrorism\u201d, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Thursday, according to the official IRIB news agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese words are an official announcement and a clear unveiling of America\u2019s targeted and governmental terrorism,\u201d Mousavi said, calling on the international community to condemn Hook\u2019s comments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Revolutionary Guards aerospace division commander said four U.S. military bases in the region were used to deploy aircraft and drones involved in the Jan. 3 attack that killed Soleimani, including two bases in Iraq and another in Kuwait. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMost of the drones\u201d had taken off from Kuwait, Amirali Hajizadeh told state television, without saying if a drone from Kuwait was ultimately responsible for the hit on Soleimani. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S.-Iranian tensions have steadily increased since Trump withdrew the United States from Iran\u2019s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018 and imposed tough news sanctions that have hammered the Iranian economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The military flare-up began in December when rockets fired at U.S. bases in Iraq killed a U.S. contractor. Washington blamed pro-Iran militia and carried out air strikes that killed at least 25 fighters. After the militia surrounded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad for two days, Trump ordered the drone strike on Soleimani.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI (Reuters) – The successor to the Iranian commander killed in a U.S. drone strike would suffer the same fate if he followed a similar path by killing Americans, the U.S. special representative for Iran said, according to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.\u00a0 Washington blamed General Qassem Soleimani for masterminding attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. forces in the region. U.S. President… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4010,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions\/4010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}