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Ghalibaf described General Soleimani as a role model in all aspects, including his efficiency, bravery, sincerity, and strategic thinking.

Speaking on Tuesday, Ghalibaf said that General Soleimani was a man of action who achieved remarkable success due to his ability to overcome difficulties and open new paths.

He lamented that General Soleimani’s capabilities and effectiveness have not been adequately explained to the public.

Ghalibaf highlighted that General Soleimani’s victories across various fields were the result of his careful calculations and avoidance of recklessness.

He also emphasized that General Soleimani was not only a military leader but also an exceptional role model in the political, social, and cultural spheres.

Ghalibaf concluded by stating that despite being widely known, General Soleimani remains largely unknown due to the lack of in-depth explanations of his multifaceted personality and his ability to address complex challenges.

Ghalibaf urged for a more comprehensive understanding of General Soleimani’s legacy and his significance as a role model for all Iranians.

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After two years have passed, we return and commemorate this anniversary that has not disappeared during the past two years and its leaders and martyrs have not disappeared, neither their names, nor their pictures, nor their souls, nor their memory, nor their thoughts, nor their jihad, nor their achievements, nor the voice of revenge that resounds in the hearts of all their lovers throughout the world.

When this occasion is commemorated today in Iran, in Iraq, in many Islamic and Arab countries, this revival is intended first to express recognition of the beauty, the kindness of these leaders and these martyrs. As you know, one of the misfortunes of mankind throughout history is the people who are in denial of the clear beauty of individuals such as these martyrs offered, what they accomplished, what they gave to their people, their nation, and their region.

The martyrs who made great sacrifices for the sake of the pride, dignity, life, and happiness of our nation, our peoples, our country, and our homelands, we express our appreciation to them, our thanks to them, our love for them, our glorification for them, for what they offered and what they did and what they strived for.

The real value addressed with this appreciation and thanks is to emphasize the stability of their brothers and sisters who carried on their path of steadfastness, patience, commitment, resistance, presence, challenging and confronting the arrogant American and Zionist projects in our region, whatever the sacrifices were, and during these two years, there have also been confrontations.

Great sacrifices and huge sacrifices have been made and one of the most prominent features of these was the battle of the sword of al-Quds in Gaza, in occupied Palestine, and the epic war of steadfastness and heroism that is still going on in the land of Yemen.

When we commemorate and talk about [General] Haj Qassem and Haj Abu Mahdi in relation to the incident of their martyrdom we must be wary about the enemy plots.

Let us take some lessons from their martyrdom. I want to speak, with regards to the people in this region who talk about the killer and the martyr when we talk about Karbala. It is not enough to talk about [Imam] Hussein and Abbas, you must speak about Yazid and Ubaydallah bin Ziyad, otherwise, the picture will be incomplete.

Between the killer and the martyr, our peoples, our countries, our governments, our homelands must determine a decisive position, not for the sake of the martyr, but for their sake, for their awareness, for their insight, for their battle, for their future and for the truth.

Iraq, which was a battlefield of [General] Haj Soleimani and [Commander] Haj Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and also the land of their martyrdom, the martyr [General] Haj Qassem Soleimani and his brothers from Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, the martyr [Commander] Haj Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and his brothers from the Popular Mobilization. Iraq was also the place of the killer, which was the Americans, and what is required from an Iraqi position and the same position from all the people of our region is our position on the killer and our position on the martyr. The Americans are the killer, let us not talk about history, but just the past twenty years; who occupied Iraq, killing tens of thousands of civilians, by the Americans’ own admission, destroyed many important sites, areas, and other parts of the country’s components, plundering Iraq’s resources and still plundering, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people, practicing the most horrific forms of torture against Iraqi men and women and the Abu Ghraib prison scandals are still in the minds of everybody.

The examples [of the U.S.] are clear, public, and known to all. This is America before it killed [General] Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. America killed, tortured, imprisoned, displaced, destroyed, looted, ruled with a tyrannical fist and is still tyrannical in Iraq abusing its sky and land.

The [Iraqi] resistance expelled the U.S. armed forces in 2011-2012, but America itself, this killer, is the one who created Daesh, according to [former President] Trump and [Mike] Pompeo, who was the head of the CIA and later the Secretary of State and senior military leaders in the United States of America.

Through Daesh, Iraq was placed in front of a real existential threat and we all remember those days when many Iraqi provinces fell within days, and Baghdad was under threat, Karbala was under threat and the rest of the Iraqi provinces were in the circle of great danger. America bears responsibility for all the crimes committed by Daesh in Iraq, with the pretext of Daesh that it created, the [U.S] returned to Iraq under different titles. This unjust, arrogant, hypocritical killer whose hypocrisy has no parallel in history, this is the killer.

As for the martyr, he is the one who since the occupation of Iraq, and here when I talk about the martyr about Haj [General] Qassem Soleimani, I am talking about Haj [General] Qassem Soleimani and what he represents, not only about the person, when I talk about Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis and who he represents and what he represents; i am not referring here only about the person. As for the martyr, he is the one who resisted this occupation and stood by the Iraqis in their resistance to the occupation and contributed to the establishment of the Iraqi resistance factions and provided them with weapons, strength, vigor, hope, confidence and enthusiasm until the great victory and the expulsion of the American forces from Iraq through resistance in all its forms, especially the military and armed resistance, and when Daesh was brought in for America to return to Iraq, he was the first to stand by the Iraqi people to defend men, women, children, sanctities, dignity, honors, cities, villages and all Iraqis.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, here Hajj Qassem represented his eminence the leader, he represented the government of the Islamic Republic, he represented its armed forces, he represented its [Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, he represented its brave and proud people. He and his brothers went [to Iraq] in the early days of Daesh’s presence, these were very difficult days, and they offered many martyrs, and [commander] Haj Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and his brothers where the first to respond to the fatwa of the honorable religious authority and its historical call for jihad.

The martyr slept on the ground and lived among the fighters, shared their pain, their hope, their joy, their sorrow, their hunger, their thirst, this is the martyr who saved Iraq and fought in defense of Iraq; and if Iraq today enjoys security, peace and stability, it is to a large degree due to the blessing of these martyrs.

This is the martyr and this is the killer!  Is there anything equitable? here we come to the lesson of the martyr and the killer. Knowing the enemy and the friend, is there any equity? is there a sane person who can equate this killer with this martyr?

Between America, which occupied, killed, imprisoned, tortured, destroyed, looted, and created Daesh, and between the Islamic Republic of Iran, which supported, defended, protected and provided, is there justice for someone to say yes, America is a friend and Iran is a friend, and we deal with this friend the same way we deal with this friend?

What’s worst is that some people act as if America is the friend and Iran is the enemy, that the killer is [General] Qassem Soleimani and [Commander] Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the killer of the Iraqi people is the friend and that the martyr and whoever represents this martyr, the protectors and defenders are the enemy, this is a disaster.

A disaster in awareness, a disaster in thought, a disaster in insight, a disaster in morals, a disaster in humanity, of course, this matter is made by the American embassy, ??the [enemy’s] media, their social media sites and electronic armies, not only in Iraq but in the entire region.

They distort the image of the martyr; they distort the image of the resistance and the defender. As for the one who commits the most heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, commits massacres in broad daylight, tortures and assaults women in prisons in Iraq, these Americans? No, these are friends, friends of civilization and civilians who lent us a helping hand.

When we come to our region, Palestine today has been occupied by the Zionists for decades. What the Palestinian people suffer also here we will make a comparison between the killer and the martyr. What the Palestinian people suffer is known to everybody because of the occupation, displacement, diaspora, refugee camps inside and outside Palestine, thousands of prisoners in Israeli jails, the tremendous suffering experienced by prisoners in enemy jails and they are resisting. The last symbol of the great resistance to these prisoners is the prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash and the prisoners who accomplished a heroic act months ago [escaped from a highly fortified Israeli jail]. The real suffering weeks ago was the completion of a wall around Gaza to rule over a siege that has lasted more than 15 years. Two million people are besieged, and this killer is talking about human rights, about morals, about values, about the messages of heaven and about the dialogue of civilizations.

There are two million people in the Gaza Strip trapped. Millions of Palestinians are displaced outside their land at home and abroad, suffering from wars, killings, assassinations and daily attacks since 1948.

Who does this? Israel? Who is the Israeli? Who is Israel? This Israeli is just a soldier for the Americans, this is an American tool. America is responsible for all the Israeli crimes in Palestine and the region.

Everything that Israel has done, and everything that Israel does, America is responsible for, because America is the one that funds Israel, supports it, arms it, protects it, and it is the one that imposes on the world to establish relations with Israel, recognize Israel, and normalize with Israel. And America is the one that terrifies all countries, most of the Arab countries and armies, so that they do not fight Israel.

The biggest and real protector of Israel in the region is the United States of America, and therefore it is responsible for all of Israel’s crimes in Palestine, and here too it is responsible for all of Israel’s crimes in Lebanon. It is not a simple matter. We in Lebanon talk about Israel and the resistance as if they are two sentences and we cut them off, and we quickly go to local and detailed issues. No, this is an issue related to the existence of Lebanon, the survival of Lebanon, the good things in Lebanon, the future of Lebanon, the dignity of Lebanon, the sovereignty of Lebanon, the blood of our people and our honor.

For the Lebanese also; between the killer and the martyr in Palestine, the killer is the American and the Israeli, and the martyr alongside the Palestinian martyr is the martyr Qassem Soleimani and who represents and how he represents.

And in Lebanon, too, the discourse for the Lebanese who behave like America is a friend. Yes, we have a fundamentalist disagreement. We have a fundamental disagreement in this matter and in this issue. This is not an ordinary and simple matter; this is a larger matter than strategic discussions. All the wars Israel waged in Lebanon, the raids, the massacres it committed, the killing, wounding, destroying, emigrating, occupying, imprisoning, and torturing, Lebanon is still in the cycle of occupation, in the cycle of threat, danger and every day there is an Israeli threat. Every day an Israeli threatens to destroy Lebanon and wipe Lebanon, and the United States of America bears responsibility first and foremost for everything that Israel has done and is doing.

It is strange how we know who kills us, shoots us, occupies our land, kills our men, women and children, commits massacres, threatens the existence of our country, and that America is the one who supports it and defends it, and we look at America as a friend.

This is a calamity, this is a political disaster in awareness and insight, and let me also say in humanity, in morals, and in diagnosis. And the mistake here when you consider a friend is that you resort to him, you resort to whom you think of as a friend, and he is the worst enemy. He is the real enemy. He is the head of enmity, hatred, grudge, conspiracy, injustice, tyranny, and occupation.”

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
Secretary-General
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Movement

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Addressing worshippers in Tehran, Khatami said Iran had two Soleimanis, one who was alive and whose name was the symbol of resistance and courage, and a martyr who fought bravely and did amazingly.

“The Americans had said that it would take at least ten years for Daesh to leave Mosul, but this great man [Soleimani] said that there would be no news of the Daesh government for another three months.”

A member of the European Parliament has acknowledged that nobody did more to defeat ISIL terrorists in Iraq than the legendary Iranian commander.

“While the U.S. and Allies were responsible for the rise of ISIL and the arming of Jihadists Groups, nobody did more to defeat ISIL in Iraq than General Soleimani,” Mick Wallace said in a post on his Twitter account.

Wallace also condemned the international community for not taking any action about the assassination of the top Iranian general, saying, “Where was the condemnation from the International Community when he was murdered by the US…?”

In July 2020, a UN expert said the U.S. attack that killed the top Iranian general violated international law.

“Major General Soleimani was in charge of Iran military strategy, and actions, in Syria and Iraq. But absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the US was unlawful,” Agnes Callamard, UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said.

“Huge funeral for Gen. Soleimani was a kind of military exercise”

The Tehran Friday prayer leader also said the funeral for General Soleimani which was attended by tens of millions in Iran and Iraq was a kind of military exercise.

General Soleimani’s “pure blood” resulted in the fleeing of the American troops from Afghanistan, and it will soon be the same in Iraq, according to a resolution passed by the Iraqi parliament, the cleric pointed out.

He added the dawning of victory in Yemen is obvious thanks to the general’s “pure blood”.

“Iran slapped the United States with an attack on Ain al-Assad [airbase], many of whom were sent to hell but censored [by the U.S. media]. But this was not our final revenge. All the perpetrators, commanders, executors, advisers and the criminal Trump who claimed responsibility for this crime will be punished,” he remarked.

Iran’s attack on the U.S. airbase in Iraq shattered the U.S. image in the world. It was the first time that U.S. was attacked since the Second World War.

“Iran’s policy is deterrence”

Khatami also said last week Israel attacked a warehouse in Latakia, Syria, and struck a food and medicine warehouse.

According to the Friday prayer leader, this means that the Zionist regime is a regime of “constant aggression” and “will have no destiny but inevitable destruction.”

Referring to the holding of the Great Prophet 17 military exercise, he said the great message of the drill was the example of God’s word in Holy Quran which says “Prepare against them whatever you can of [military] power and war-horses, awing thereby the enemy of Allah, and your enemy, and others besides them, whom you do not know, but Allah knows them. And whatever you spend in the way of Allah will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged.”

“Our policy is deterrence and that is why this exercise was held. 16 missiles have been fired, 4 of which can reach Tel Aviv, and if you have the least imagination and dream of aggression against the heroic nation of Iran, with these missiles, your bright day will become a dark evening,” Khatami concluded.

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Speaking on a television show hosted by MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan, Robert Malley said Iran’s nuclear program accelerated only after the former U.S. president launched his maximum pressure campaign.

Malley is Biden’s point man for Iran, tasked with reviving the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018. He was part of the U.S. negotiating team that worked out the deal in 2015.

Asked whether the U.S. should be the first to extend an olive branch and rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name for the nuclear deal, the envoy moved the goalposts quickly.

“We said very clearly we are prepared to come back into the deal if they’re prepared to do their part,” Malley said, adding that the U.S. “will lift sanctions” if Iran returns to full compliance with its nuclear obligations under the JCPOA.

Malley, who had been in Vienna as Iran and P4+1 countries engaged in marathon negotiations to resurrect the dying deal, said “ideas” were put on the table about removing sanctions that Trump had imposed on Iran “in violation of the deal”.

He also slammed the Trump administration’s decision to assassinate Iran’s top anti-terror commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying it “made America less safe”.

The show host referred to Trump’s recent remarks that he ordered the assassination because he was “under pressure” from his party senators before his impeachment trial.

He also cited a report that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had warned Trump not to strike the top Iranian commander, saying it would spark war.

“Don’t the Iranian government and the Iranian people have a right to be outraged by these revelations that the U.S. killed Iran’s top general for domestic political purposes, that the U.S. top general had to prevent the U.S. president from starting a war with Iran for nakedly political reasons,” Mehdi asked.

Malley, pushed on the back foot, agreed that the Trump administration’s move “invited more trouble rather than de-escalating tensions”

“The American people have a right to be outraged with the fact that a policy that was designed to keep America safe, by killing Qassem Soleimani, by imposing a maximum pressure campaign,” the envoy said in his response. “Three years on, the verdict is clear, America is less safe because Iran has a more expansive nuclear program and because it accelerated and intensified its regional activities.”

Gen. Soleimani, the celebrated anti-Daesh commander, was assassinated in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. It led to heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.

===========Vienna talks in stalemate

In an editorial published on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal said Iran’s latest demand is that the U.S. agree to a clause that makes American withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal contingent on the United Nations’ approval, since it was the U.S. that unilaterally withdrew from the deal.

The newspaper, doing Washington’s bidding, termed the clause “unconstitutional”, asserting that the U.S. president “can’t stop a future Congress or president from changing policy, especially when the nuclear agreement was never submitted to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.”

It further stated that President Biden, like his former boss Barack Obama, would not submit the deal for a Senate vote “because he knows it would be unlikely to get a simple majority, much less the two-thirds needed to ratify a treaty.”

“Giving the UN more sway than Congress over U.S. foreign policy would be a gross abdication of the president’s oath of office,” the editorial noted.

The ongoing talks in Vienna have been temporarily shelved due to the transition of power in Tehran, but Iran has made it emphatically clear that it is the U.S. that must make the first move.

Iranian officials have repeatedly called on their U.S. counterparts to “take tough decisions” to revive the deal, but the Biden administration has so far refused to budge from its stand.

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Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, Iran’s permanent ambassador to the UN office in Geneva, made the remarks on Thursday while addressing the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

He was addressing a report last year by Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, about the assassination, that sufficed to describe it as “arbitrary killing.”

According to Press TV, the Iranian diplomat called the designation a mere understatement of the terrorist crime that failed to depict the enormity of the “unjust, illegal, and barbaric murder.”

Callamard’s description, he said, should not lead to any underestimation of the gravity of “this act of state terrorism”.

General Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was martyred together with his companions in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s airport in January 2020. The attack took place while General Soleimani was paying an official visit to the Iraqi capital.

The strike was directly ordered by former U.S. president Donald Trump.

Among other martyrs in the strike were senior Iraqi counterterrorism commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Both commanders had earned huge admiration both inside their respective countries and throughout the region.

General Soleimani’s reputation has registered him as the region’s most decisive and popular anti-terror military official, who led the region’s successful battle against the terrorist group of Daesh.

Baghaei Hamaneh described General Soleimani as a “true defender of the human rights as well as an opponent of occupation and Daesh’s terrorism.”

“This measure (targeting him) was an international crime that came to threaten the international peace and security too,” he added.

The culpability of the U.S. administration, including those who were involved in the assassination, is clear to see, the diplomat said.

“The Iranian people, who know [General] Soleimani as the model of a soldier, and the entire people of the region, who see their liberation from the scourge of Daesh is owed to his sacrifice, will never stop demanding justice for this tremendous crime,” he stated.

The world’s human rights organizations are expected to pay heed to the sheer scope of the crime and its lasting repercussions for the rule of law as well as human rights and dignity, Baghaei Hamaneh said.

The bodies have to realize the full extent of this “clear example of lawlessness and insult against the basic right to life,” he concluded.

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The Judiciary chief reiterated that the country is pursuing the assassination of the Iranian and Iraqi commanders and the cowardly move will not remain unanswered.

“As the Judiciary, as we are responsible for all cases; we are also responsible for this specific case although there may not be a fair trial because of its system of domination,” he said.

He also lashed out at the US for targeting the symbol of resistance in a crime that has violated all international regulations and the territorial integrity of Iraq.

On January 3, 2020, a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport assassinated General Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. The attack — that also killed al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror group, along with several others — came while General Soleimani was on an official visit to the Iraqi capital.

Upon his arrival in Baghdad, Iranian Judiciary Chief Raeisi was welcomed by a number of Iraqi officials, Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi, and staff of the embassy. Iranian Judiciary Chief arrived in Iraq on Monday for a three-day visit at the official invitation of Head of Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council Faeq Zaidan. The visiting Judiciary Chief Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi is scheduled to visit with Iraqi President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and Mohammad al-Halbousi Iraqi Parliament Speaker.

Baghdad and Tehran already have plans to jointly sue the US for assassinating top Iranian Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Deputy Head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

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IRAN NEWS NATIONAL DESK

TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday said that Iran and Iraq are determined to carry out the provisions of both sides’ latest visit.

President Rouhani welcomed Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi here in Tehran on Tuesday.

The formal ceremony was held and President Rouhani and the Iraqi PM reviewed the guard of honor and introduced the high-ranking delegations.

In a joint press conference with Iraqi PM, President Rouhani expressed content about the improvement of economic ties between Tehran and Baghdad.

Rouhani informed that he has discussed regional health issues under the outbreak of Covid-19 with Al-Kadhimi.

“I assure the Iraqi nation that Iran will stand beside them by supplying the required health products and medicine in the fight against the coronavirus,” the Iranian President said.

The Iranian President added that Iran-Iraq trade ties are planned to hit 20 billion per annum in the future.

He also paid tribute to both countries’ commanders, Lt. Gen. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was martyred by the direct order of the US President in Baghdad, in January 2020.

Rouhani also reiterated Iran’s readiness to ensure security and stability in Iraq.

Al-Kadhimi, for his part, named expansion of mutual ties with Iran as the main purpose of his visit to Tehran. He said Tehran-Baghdad ties are historic.

He vowed that his country will not allow any threat against Iran from the Iraqi soil. He said Iraq is in need of cooperation with Iran to overcome challenges put forward by the COVID-19 outbreak and the slump in oil price.

Underlining the significance of preserving peace and stability in the region, he said Iraq will never forget Iran’s support in its combat with the ISIL and terrorist groups. Iraq accordingly stood beside Iran to help it overcome economic challenges, he added.  He hoped that Iran-Iraq cooperation will end in overcoming regional challenges, as well.

Rouhani welcomed Al-Kadhimi at Tehran’s Islamic Summit Conference Hall on Tuesday. The two officials held a private meeting before attending the press conference.

On the sidelines of the meeting, an official from the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) informed that Iraq and Iran are on the verge of finalizing a foreign currency agreement which will inundate Iran’s market with several million U.S. dollars in the near future.

As Hamid Ghanbari said, the two neighboring countries are to expand foreign currency and banking ties.

Ghanbari, who accompanied Iranian FM Zarif into his recent visit to Iraq, added that in this visit the two sides have negotiated on various cooperation fields and all the accorded issues will be finalized during the current Iraqi PM visit to Iran.

Almost a year ago, Iran and Iraq inked a banking agreement and the CBI governor made a trip to Iraq almost a month ago.

The meeting was held at the presence of Iranian Minister of Health and Medical Education Saeed Namaki, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami, Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami, Caretaker of Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade Hossein Modarres Khiabani, and The Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdolnaser Hemmati.

Later yesterday, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei received Iraqi Prime Minister.

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IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

TEHRAN – Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi has commanded a new report by UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions Agnes Callamard regarding the U.S.’ January assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, criticizing the U.S. for its impudent reaction to the report.

In a statement on Thursday, Mousavi referred to the U.S. officials’ defence of assassinating the top Iranian commander, saying it is nothing new for professional criminals to try to justify their atrocities.

However, he added, it is a source of regret and indicative of America’s arrogant nature to see their rude reaction to the UN and its rapporteur who has described as “unlawful” the U.S. move to assassinate General Soleimani as part of her official mission.

“General Soleimani was the most influential force against expansion of terrorism and violent extremism, especially the type staged by ISIS, across the region and the world; therefore, it is quite normal to see that the US regime – whose incumbent president has played the key role in the formation and expansion of wild terrorist movements in West Asia – does not stop its hate speech against and defamation of the top commander,” Mousavi said.

“All of these points indicate that the U.S.’ regime’s fear of General Soleimani’s ethos and cause has even grown bigger compared to the time when the hero was alive,” he added.

“Assassination of this national hero and defender of regional peace and security proved that [fighting] ISIS and terrorism is [only] part of the U.S.’ ploy for plundering the region, and that Washington’s claim of fighting terrorism is a completely hollow and baseless claim,” Mousavi said.

“This explains why ISIS was the first to celebrate the assassination, and of course the Zionist regime was the only entity that offered congratulations to the murderers of General Soleimani on his assassination.”

“The fact that the cruelest people on earth and the worst outlaw regimes were General Soleimani’s enemies is enough to prove how great he was,” he added.

“The U.S. assassinated General Soleimani and his companions by violating the compelling norms and fundamental principles of the international law and also in violation of all fundamental humanitarian and moral elements. The act is a clear instance of state-sponsored terrorism, and entails clear international responsibility for America.”

Mousavi said the U.S.’ assassination of General Soleimani is yet another item in the long list of Washington’s evil and hostile moves against the Iranian nation, which started with the 1953 coup, continued with the strengthening of the oppressive and violent monarchy, went on in the form of all-out support for Saddam during the 1980s war, culminated in the slaughter of 300 passengers of the Airbus flight, and has continued up to now in various forms including the imposition of cruel sanctions and economic terrorism.

The spokesman finally called on the United Nations and its Human Rights Council to do their part in addressing and condemning such dangerous measures as the one taken by Washington, which clearly violates the UN Charter, human rights, and the international law.

The UN and its Human Rights Council are expected to prevent normalization of bullying, unlawfulness, and organized manslaughter by the U.S.’ regime, Mousavi said.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will spare no effort in demanding justice and claiming its rights and those of its citizens,” he added.

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According To Iran News, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani said that it seems that there is a link between the plan of the assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the US claim regarding the attack on Camp Taji.

“Visiting Iraq, I asked the Iraqi authorities to identify and introduce the internal agents involved in the assassination operation of the martyrs Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis,” wrote Shamkhani in a Friday tweet.

“It seems that there is a link between the plan of the assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the US claim on the attack against Camp Taji,” he added.

Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of the US Central Command on Thursday said the investigation into the deadly attack Wednesday on Camp Taji north of Baghdad was ongoing, but Kataeb Hezbollah is probably the culprit.

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