It looks like a red herring in the Iranian quasi-revolutionary context. The “Great Satan” is back on the mullah regime media scene in the person of… Donald Trump. A senior Iranian military official said Friday night his country is still seeking revenge for Washington’s 2020 elimination in hopes of “killing” the former US president.
“We hope we can kill Trump (former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kenneth McKenzie (former head of US Army Central Command in the Middle East) and the military officials who gave the order for Soleimani’s assassination,” General said Amirali Hajizadeh on TV.
“We are now able to hit American ships with missiles at a distance of 2,000 km,” said the general, who heads the aerospace forces of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army. The Islamic Republic’s ballistic programs worry Westerners, who accuse the country of wanting to increase the range of its missiles and destabilize the Middle East and Israel, Tehran’s sworn enemy.
Cruise missile launches
On Saturday, state television broadcast footage of a “new Paveh cruise missile with a range of 1,650 km” manufactured by the Revolutionary Guards. Qassem Soleimani, former head of the Quds Force in charge of the Revolutionary Guards’ external operations, was assassinated in January 2020 in Baghdad in a spectacular American raid. President Trump said at the time he ordered the strike in response to a series of attacks on US interests in Iraq.
VIDEO. Powerful Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed in Iraq by US drone fire
Five days later, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a US airbase in Iraq where US troops were stationed. No US soldiers were killed, but Washington said dozens of people suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of the blasts.