“With the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the US committed a serious violation of the right to life and the principle of non-use of force,” the Foreign Ministry said in a post on its Twitter account on Monday, marking the second anniversary of martyrdom of the commander.
“All perpetrators and orchestrators of this crime have ‘criminal responsibility’,” it added.
General Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were targeted along with their companions on January 3, 2020, in a terrorist drone strike authorized by Trump near Baghdad International Airport.
Five days later, in a military operation codenamed Operation Martyr Soleimani, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) launched a volley of ballistic missiles at the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s western province of Anbar and at another airbase in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region. Over 100 American troops were later diagnosed with “traumatic brain injuries” in Ain al-Asad.
Iran has called Soleimani’s assassination state terrorism and vowed to put an end to the US military’s presence in the region as its ultimate revenge, while urging neighboring Iraq to expel US forces from the Arab country’s soil. The Islamic Republic has also pledged to bring all the perpetrators, first and foremost Trump, to justice.
In recent days, people in Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere have been attending events marking the second anniversary of the two commanders’ martyrdom.