A statue that was erected to honor Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force who was killed by U.S. forces in 2020, was torched hours after it was unveiled last week in Iran.
“The six-meter high statue was set on fire hours after its official unveiling in Shahrekord, near Esfahan, where it was installed to commemorate the commander, who was killed by a US drone in Baghdad two years ago,” The Telegraph reported. “The perpetrators were unknown, said Mohammad Ali Nekonam, a provincial representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, calling it a ‘brazen act’ of desecration.”
Senior Islamic cleric Mohammad Ali Nekounam said “this treacherous crime was carried out in darkness, just like the other crime committed at night at Baghdad airport.”
WATCH:
#ResistanceUnits in the city of Shahrekord (population over 200K) in central #Iran torched the statue of terror master Qassem #Soleimani this evening, only hours after it was unveiled in the first square of the city. #IranProtests continue. pic.twitter.com/hh5VQ3Qj4Y
— Alireza Jafarzadeh (@A_Jafarzadeh) January 5, 2022
Solemani was killed in a drone strike in January 2020 at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by former President Donald Trump.
The Daily Wire reported:
It is difficult to overstate the geopolitical and strategic ramifications of Soleimani’s long-overdue demise. Aside from Osama bin Laden himself, no leading international jihadist thug has had more American blood on his hands than the decades-long veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force (IRGC-QF) — a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and umbrella organization overseeing so much regional and global evil, from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Lebanon to Gaza to European capitals to our very own westernhemisphere. From Hezbollah to Hamas to Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Yemeni Houthi rebels to (contra Iranian propaganda) al-Qaeda itself, the extraterritorial tentacles of the inherently jihadist Iranian regime are simply ubiquitous.
No nation on Earth funds, sponsors, and exports more genocidal jihad than the Islamic Republic of Iran. And no one has been more responsible for that over the past 20-plus years than Qassem Soleimani. The Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran is thus correct when he writes today that, “[t]he killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, were certainly meaningful, but they were also largely symbolic.” By contrast, Doran continues, “[t]aking out the architect of the Islamic Republic’s decades-long active campaign of violence against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, represents a tectonic shift in Middle Eastern politics.”
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, who has since taken over for Solemani, vowed in remarks last week that Iran will seek revenge for Soleimani’s death and that it will happen “within” the U.S.
Ghaani said, “We will prepare ground for the hard revenge against the US from within their homes, as we do not need to be present as supervisors everywhere, wherever is necessary we take revenge against Americans by the help of people on their side and within their own homes without our presence.”
Al-Monitor reported:
Speaking at an event commemorating the two-year anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination on Jan. 3, 2020, by a US drone strike ordered by former President Donald Trump, Ghaani said, “We will get revenge that you will not forget for the rest of your life.” Talking about Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who advocated for the strike behind the scenes, Ghaani said, “All of the criminals who are on the scene, from the criminal US president to all of those behind the crime of the assassination of Soleimani, are under our magnifying glass.”
Ghaani added, “We do not have the style of [US] criminals, with divine power; we have our own style of revenge.”
The news comes as the Biden administration tries to get Iran to reenter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which critics argue would not stop Iran from being able to obtain a nuclear weapon.
While the Biden administration tries to get a deal completed, a spokesperson for Iran’s military stated in late November that they will not give up their pursuit of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
“We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter,” Brig.-Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s armed forces, told the Iranian Students News Agency. “We want to destroy Zionism in the world.”