An Iranian cleric, Shahab Moradi, said Iran would struggle to hit back against the US by striking a parallel figure to Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani because the US has only "fictional" heroes.

"Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spiderman and SpongeBob?" he said in a live interview on Iran's IRIB Ofogh TV channel.

The US assassinated Soleimani in Iraq on Thursday.

The strike, orchestrated by President Donald Trump, was criticized by US politicians and European leaders who urged de-escalation.

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An Iranian cleric mocked the US by saying Iran would not be able to strike back in kind after the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani because the US has only fictional heroes such as Spider-Man and SpongeBob SquarePants.

The cleric, Shahab Moradi, made the comment in a live TV interview on Iran's IRIB Ofogh channel. A clip of the segment was posted on Saturday evening on Twitter, but it is unclear when the program aired.

In the clip, Moradi says:

"In your opinion, if anyone around the world wants to take their revenge on the assassination of Soleimani and intends to do it proportionately in the way they suggest — that we take one of theirs now that they've got one of ours — who should we consider to take out in the context of America?

"Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob? They don't have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn't have any heroes. All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they're all fictional."

Shahab Moradi called in to Iran's IRIB Ofogh TV channel. Screenshot/Asranetv/Twitter

A US airstrike late Thursday killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, at the airport in Baghdad.

Soleimani's death has sparked fresh tensions between Iran and the US as Iran promised to take revenge for the death of the revered general.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced three days of mourning in Iran as well as "severe revenge," though it remains unclear how the country would carry that out.