Iran official on Soleimani killing: 'The response for a military action is military action'

Kim Hjelmgaard | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Iranian parliament members chant 'death to America' Members of the 290-seat Iranian parliament raise a fist and chant "death to America" to protest the death of Qasem Soleimani.

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations said Saturday "the response for a military action is military action," as fears grew that a U.S. airstrike that killed the head of Tehran's elite Quds force and mastermind of its security and intelligence strategy will draw Washington and the Middle East region into a broader military conflict.

Iran has already vowed an unspecified harsh retaliation for the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani near the Iraqi capital's international airport on Thursday. President Donald Trump said he ordered the strike to prevent a conflict with Iran because Soleimani was plotting attacks that endangered American troops and officials.

No evidence was provided.

A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said that at least two missiles or mortars landed in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Saturday. The embassy was not hit. It was not immediately clear if they caused injuries elsewhere or who fired them. Iraq media reported that at least three Iraqi military personnel were injured in the attack.

Analysts said because Iran can't match the U.S.'s military strength its potential targets for revenge range from rocket attacks on U.S. allies such as Israel to sabotaging oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway for oil supplies.

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It could also embark on a sustained campaign of cyber-warfare or target American citizens and troops abroad near embassies and consulates or military installations.

It will "not play out on U.S. televisions as some grand campaign. It will be asymmetric and messy, playing out on shipping lanes and computer servers," said Gregory Brew, a historian of Iran and its oil industry, in a social media post.

Richard N. Haass, a former U.S. diplomat who worked for both Presidents Bush, said the "region (and possibly the world) will be the battlefield."

But comments from Iran's New York-based envoy to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, that "we have to act and we will act" further raise the prospect of an all-out war. "The U.S. started the economic war in May 2018 and last night they started a military war by an act of terror against one of our top generals," Takht-Ravanchi said in remarks published by Iranian state media.

Separately, a closer adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told CNN in an interview Sunday that his country's response to the killing by the U.S. of one its most influential commanders will certainly be a military response "against military sites."

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Trump abandoned a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers 18 months ago, reinstating sanctions on Iran's economy and oil sector. Soleimani's killing comes after months of rising tensions and tit-for-tat hostilities between the U.S. and Iran resulting from Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord negotiated by President Barack Obama. Among the hostilities: downing each other's drones in the Persian Gulf. Washington also accuses Iran of being behind a series of attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities in September, and of sabotaging and detaining allied oil tankers in the region in May and June.

Iran has withdrawn from aspects of the accord in stages. It may announce another move away from the deal late Sunday or early Monday.

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The Iran envoy's remarks come as thousands of mourners marched in a funeral procession through Baghdad on Saturday for Iran's top general and Iraqi militant leaders – including Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the leader of a pro-Iran militia group in Iraq – who were killed alongside Soleimani. The mourners chanted "Death to America, death to Israel" while carrying pictures of the two men.

Iraq's prime minister joined the procession, according to Iran Front Page, a privately-held Iranian website that publishes news about Iran in English.

There also appeared to be some celebrations in Baghdad over Soleimani's death, a point highlighted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. For while Soleimani was a consequential figure who was respected and feared in equal measure, he was also, as the former journalist and Middle East expert Kim Ghattas writes on the website of the Atlantic magazine, responsible for upholding "a repressive system and was seen as the man responsible for Iran's role in costly wars abroad."

Angry protests erupt: U.S. kills Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani

Soleimani's body was returned to Iran on late Saturday for a funeral and burial in his hometown, Kerman, in central Iran. Hundreds of thousands of mourners took to the streets across Iran on Sunday to pay their respects to a figure who is widely hailed as a war hero in Iran. The Trump administration labelled him a terrorist.

As the head of Quds Force, a branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Soleimani directed pro-Iranian militias or proxies from Lebanon to Yemen. At the time of his death, he was managing and mobilizing militias across Iraq, including groups responsible for a recent siege on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

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World affairs correspondent @khjelmgaard explains if a U.S. airstrike that killed a major Iranian military leader will lead America into another war. pic.twitter.com/mLB111WpwL — USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 4, 2020

Osamah Khalil, a Middle East expert at Syracuse University, said that the killings of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis, "were a dangerous and ill-advised escalation by the United States. Their deaths will make it more difficult to resolve the ongoing tensions between Washington and Tehran and will only destabilize Iraq further."

Khalil added: "Rather than ending the endless wars as he promised, President Trump's actions have ensured more conflict and instability."

Amelie de Montchalin, France's deputy minister for foreign affairs, told French radio that that the U.S. action had created "a more dangerous world."

The Pentagon has deployed an extra 3,000 troops to the Middle East to help respond to any backlash. And Trump on Saturday gave Congress a defense of his decision to kill Soleimani, even as he warned Iran the U.S. would strike them again if they retaliate for the attack that has drawn protests in the U.S. and threats of revenge from Iran.

"Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites" and they "WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD," Trump tweeted. "The USA wants no more threats!"

Trump defends Soleimani killing: President warns Iran against retaliation

Fabian Hinz, a Berlin-based expert in missile proliferation and Iran's military, said that while U.S. military technology and hardware capabilities far exceed Iran's, in the event of a full-blown conventional conflict a quagmire can be expected, and that Iran would likely restart its mothballed nuclear weapons program, undercutting the rationale for Trump's decision to pull out of the accord.

"Iran would likely rely mostly on asymmetric capabilities in any conflict," said Hinz. "This will include ballistic missiles, proxy militias, naval swarming attacks, mini-submarines, drones and cyber attacks."