Nasrallah: 'Blood' to Show Americans World Not Safer Post Soleimani
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday warned U.S. officials that they would be mistaken if they thought that “the world has become safer” with the death of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
“The U.S. administration will pay a hefty price and this crime will not go unpunished and it will not be forgotten,” said Nasrallah in a televised speech commemorating Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi paramilitary leader who was killed with Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
“They are saying that the world has become safer post Soleimani and we tell them that they will realize that they are mistaken through blood. The world after Soleimani’s martyrdom will be different and it will not have a place for tyrants,” Nasrallah added.
“During the upcoming days, weeks and months, the Americans must pull out their troops, officers and ships and they must leave the region. There is no choice other than departing horizontally (in coffins) after they arrived vertically,” Nasrallah warned, noting that the U.S. withdrawal from the region is “a matter of time.”
Commenting on the Iranian missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq, Nasrallah said the response to Soleimani’s killing is “not a single operation but rather a long course that leads to the ouster of American forces from the region.”
“The Ain al-Assad attack was only a slap,” the Hizbullah leader added, echoing remarks by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Praising Iran, Nasrallah said the retaliatory strike reflects “endless courage.”
“Who dares on this planet to stand in the face of America and strike one of its bases with missiles?” Nasrallah asked.
“All U.S. bases in the region can be targeted by Iranian missiles and Iran possesses more accurate missiles,” he warned.
Nasrallah also noted that “this was also a strong message to the Zionist entity (Israel), seeing as (Israeli PM Benjamin) Netanyahu used to dream of sending his warplanes to Tehran.”
“The Americans have been reined in… and the American prestige has been broken,” Nasrallah boasted.
Nasrallah also denied U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Soleimani was plotting to target four U.S. embassies, dismissing the accusations as “lies.”
Moreover, Nasrallah suggested that Iraq will be the arena that will witness future retaliatory attacks against the Americans.
“The second arena that is concerned with retaliation is the Iraqi arena in which America committed its crime and because it targeted an Iraqi leader,” Nasrallah said, adding that “should Americans refrain from leaving Iraq, the Iraqi people and resistance factions are the ones who would decide how to deal with the occupation forces.”
Source: Naharnet
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