A senior commander of the Iranian Guards has stated that the killing of all American leaders would not be enough to avenge the United States assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ top commander Qassem Soleimani two years ago.
According to the Iranian state media, Revolutionary Guard Mohammad Pakpour said, “Martyr Soleimani was such a great character that, if all American leaders are killed, this would still not avenge his assassination.
“We should avenge him by following Soleimani’s path and through other methods,’’ he charged.
The United States and Iran came close to full-blown conflict in 2020 after Soleimani’s killing in a US drone attack at Baghdad airport and Tehran’s retaliation by attacking US bases in Iraq.
Former US President Donald Trump’s administration said Soleimani was targeted for plotting future attacks on US interests and that he had in the past, helped coordinate strikes against American forces in Iraq, through militia proxies.
Pakpour’s comments came days after US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not support removing Iran’s Quds Force, an arm of its Revolutionary Guards, from a list of foreign terrorist organizations, as demanded by Tehran for the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal.
Trump abandoned the deal under which Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of international financial sanctions, and Iran responded by violating its limits.
President Joe Biden however said he aimed to restore it.
Almost a year of indirect talks between Iran and the United States have stalled since March as both Tehran and Washington blame each other for failing to settle remaining issues.
One of the unresolved questions was whether the US would remove Iran’s Guards from the terrorist list.
Washington has been considering removing the IRGC from its foreign terrorist organization blacklist in return for Iranian assurances about reining in the elite force’s influence in the Middle East.
Critics of dropping the IRGC from the list, as well as those open to the idea, said doing so would have little economic effect because other US sanctions force foreign actors to shun the group.
Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday that his country’s future should not be tied to the success or collapse of nuclear talks with world powers.