Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared on Wednesday that the regime will retaliate against the killers of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January.
“Those who ordered the murder of Gen. Soleimani, as well as those who carried this out, should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time,” warned Khamenei, according to quotes carried on his official website.
“Millions attending martyrs Soleimani and Abu Mahdi’s funerals in Iraq and Iran was the first severe slap to the United States,” he said. “But the worse one is overcoming the hegemony of arrogance and expelling the U.S. from the region. Of course, revenge will be taken on those who ordered it and the murderers.”
He also predicted that American hostility towards Tehran would continue after U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office.
Said Khamenei: “The hostility is not just from Trump’s America, which will not end when he leaves, as [President Barack] Obama’s America also did bad things to the Iranian nation.”