Iran’s envoy hails resistance for foiling US plots, changing power equation in region

Mehdi Sobhani reiterated Iran’s policy of untrammeled support for the resistance movement, noting that Iran’s anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the US three years ago, and the resistance path he organized thwarted the US plots and changed the power equation in favor of the regional nations.

He told the Beirut-based Alahednews website that General Soleimani played a significant role in improving national and international power, saying commemoration ceremonies held on the third anniversary of the hero’s martyrdom conveyed the message that he is still alive in the hearts of people across the world with his ideas and principles.

The Iranian diplomat said General Soleimani belonged not only to the Iranian people, but to all advocates of freedom and the oppressed nations around the world.

“General Soleimani is alive because the battle is still going on, and God willing, we will win in the end,” Sobhani added.

He emphasized that Iran has managed to become a top power in West Asia region over the past two decades thanks to General Soleimani’s ideas, saying the hero has succeeded in changing the equation of power in favor of the axis of resistance and against the axis of evil.

Sobhani stressed that the US administration committed a terrorist crime by assassinating General Soleimani because he had inflicted successive defeats on America in the region which made Washington unable to draw regional equations based on its own engineering.

He emphasized that the perpetrators of the commander’s assassination are “delusional” if they think they can eliminate his lofty goals and principles through his assassination.

General Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and their companions were assassinated in a US drone strike authorized by Former US President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

Two days after the attack, Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill that required the government to end the presence of all foreign military forces led by the US in the country.

Both commanders were highly revered across the Middle East because of their key role in fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.

On January 8, 2020, the IRGC targeted the US-run Ain al-Asad base in Iraq’s western province of Anbar with a wave of missile attacks in retaliation for the assassination of General Soleimani, describing its missile attack as a “first slap”.