TEHRAN -- The chief commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says there is no safe haven for the enemies who “have been defeated in all their conspiracies and rendered helpless, tired, and disappointed”.
“We are victorious today and this is what the facts of the field say,” Major General Hussein Salami told a ceremony here. “Today, the swords of the Muslims to fight the enemies have come out of scabbards, and there is no safe territory for the enemies.”
He also said Iran’s missile strikes against U.S. military bases in Iraq in retaliation for the assassination of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC Quds Force, was a “slap in the face” of the U.S., which saw itself as the world emperor.
“Whose face was this slap delivered in?” he asked, rhetorically. “It was a stinging slap in the face to the United States, which considered itself the emperor of the world and did not stop making threats of tit-for-tat retaliations.”
General Salami further said that unlike the Americans, “we did not assassinate a defenseless and unarmed commander, who was fighting terrorism across the Muslim world and had traveled to Iraq at an official invitation, with a drone and in the dead of the night.”
The IRGC chief commander stressed that Iran has yet to fully avenge the U.S. assassination of General Soleimani.
“We have exacted part of the harsh revenge (against the U.S.), and the other part still remains. Everybody is definitely aware of it. U.S. officials must bear in mind that it is impossible to take an act of aggression on a nation, and then evade the revenge,” he warned.
On January 8, 2020, the IRGC targeted Ain al-Asad airbase hosting U.S. troops in Iraq’s western province of Anbar with a volley of precision missiles. According to the Pentagon, at least 110 American forces suffered “traumatic brain injuries”.
Iran has described the missile attack on Ain al-Asad as a “first slap.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, General Salami said Iran’s enemies have been defeated.
“Depression and despair can now be seen on the faces of officials from our enemies since they cannot advance their policies,” he said.
“If we had not resisted, they (enemies) would have taken away our identity, prestige, honor, security, and dignity. The United States, the Zionist regime, some European countries, and reactionary regimes in the region cannot stand the Iranian nation’s stability, splendor, and strength,” the IRGC chief added.