Calling the US killing of General Qassem Soleimani “criminal” and an act of terrorism, the Iranian envoy to the UN said his country reserves the right to act in self-defense and threatened vengeance in US media interviews.

The killing of Soleimani “by any measure, is an obvious example of State terrorism and, as a criminal act, constitutes a gross violation of the fundamental principles of international law, including, in particular, those stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations,” Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi wrote in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council on Friday.

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Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for over 20 years, was killed in a US drone strike outside Baghdad International Airport in Iraq on Thursday. Ravanchi added that Tehran reserves the right to self-defense under international law.

The envoy followed this up with interviews to NBC and CNN on Friday evening, calling the killing of Soleimani an “act of aggression” and “tantamount to opening a war against Iran.”

He confirmed that Iran and the US have exchanged letters through a Swiss intermediary, but told NBC that he thinks the administration of US President Donald Trump “does not believe in dialogue.”

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The assassination, he told NBC, was “an act of aggression by the United States and we cannot just close our eyes on what happened to a dear general of our armed forces.”

There will be harsh revenge. Where? When? How? I do not know, but there definitely there will be some retaliation.

Speaking to CNN, Ravanchi only elaborated that “the response for a military action is a military action.”

Soleimani’s death was planned for “quite some time,” Ravanchi argued, pointing to a tweet by former Trump adviser John Bolton, a known advocate of regime change in Tehran, as proof.

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Earlier on Friday, Trump called Soleimani the “number one terrorist” in the world. The ambassador took exception to that, pointing to the general’s role in fighting against both Al-Qaeda affiliates and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.

“The US cannot claim that it is fighting terror when at the same time it is killing the champion of defeating terrorists in our region,” Ravanchi told NBC.

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