In early 2020, Iranian general Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq. Tehran swears revenge on the client, then US President Trump. Although he is no longer in office. But according to an Iranian military, they still want to kill him and others.
More than three years after the deadly US drone attack on Iranian General Kassem Soleimani, Iran is still threatening retaliation against then-US President Donald Trump. Tehran hopes to kill Trump, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then-Chief of US Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, and all commanders who gave the order to kill Soleimani, said General Amirali Hajizadeh, Commander of the Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Forces, on Iranian television on Friday night.
Soleimani was killed in a drone strike ordered by Trump at Baghdad airport in January 2020. He commanded the Al-Quds Brigades, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations branch, and was considered a hero of the Iran-Iraq War.
Trump said at the time he ordered the drone strike in response to a series of attacks on US bases in Iraq. Days after the deadly attack on Soleimani, Iranian forces fired missiles at a US military base in Iraq. Amid heightened tensions, Tehran also accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane. All 176 people on board died in the crash.
Iranian General Hajizadeh also announced that Iran has developed a long-range cruise missile. “The cruise missile, capable of a range of 1,650 kilometers, has been added to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s missile arsenal,” Hajizadeh said on state television, which reportedly also showed the first images of the new Paveh cruise missile.
Iran has expanded its missile program against opposition from the United States and concerns from European countries that it is purely defensive and used as a deterrent. As recently as November, the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that Hajizadeh said Iran had built a supersonic ballistic missile. The United States was skeptical about the report at the time.