Trump vows to hit 52 sites 'very hard' if Iran retaliates for Suleimani killing
As
general’s body is returned to Iran, president says targets represent the 52 US
hostages taken by Iran in 1979
Martin
Chulov, Julian Borger, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad and agencies
Sun 5 Jan
2020 10.11 GMTFirst published on Sun 5 Jan 2020 01.40 GMT
Donald
Trump has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites “very hard” if Iran attacks
Americans or US assets in retaliation for the drone strike that killed the
Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani and an Iraqi militia leader.
The US
president made the threat in a tweet hours before Suleimani’s body arrived in
Iran for burial and ramifications of the killings were reverberating across a
nervous region, where many believe the aftermath could spark a new era of
bloodletting and instability.
Iranian
state television footage showed a tide of mourners packing the streets of the
south-west city of Ahvaz early on Sunday to pay their respects and chanting
“death to America”. Huge crowds had joined funeral processions in Baghdad and
Tehran on Saturday as calls to avenge the Iranian general’s death mounted and
the US case for ordering his assassination was increasingly called into
question.
Trump
tweeted that Iran “is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets”
in response to Suleimani’s death. He said the US had “targeted 52 Iranian
sites” and that some were “at a very high level & important to Iran &
the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST
AND VERY HARD”.
“The USA
wants no more threats!” Trump said, adding that the 52 targets represented the
52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days after being seized at
the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979.
Trump did
not identify the sites. The Pentagon referred questions about the matter to the
White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran’s
foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Trump’s threats breached
international law. “Having committed grave breaches of int’l law in Friday’s
cowardly assassinations, realdonaldtrump threatens to commit again new
breaches,” he tweeted. “Targeting cultural sites is a war crime; – Whether
kicking or screaming, end of US malign presence in West Asia has begun.”
Iraq’s
parliament is set to meet for an extraordinary session on Sunday where MPs have
said they would push for a vote on a resolution requiring the government to
request the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. “There is no need for the
presence of American forces after defeating Daesh (Isis),” Ammar al-Shibli, a
member of the parliamentary legal committee, told Reuters. “We have our own
armed forces which are capable of protecting the country.”
Many
Iraqis, including opponents of Suleimani, have expressed anger at the US for
killing the two men on Iraqi soil and possibly dragging their country into
another conflict.
The US
justification behind Suleimani’s killing centred on there being an “imminent
attack” that he had directed, but this has been challenged in some quarters.
The New
York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi tweeted that two sources privy to
the information, held by US intelligence officials, described the case as
“razor thin”. Her tweets also detail a scramble to discover Suleimani’s
whereabouts once the decision to kill him was made.
The White
House transmitted on Saturday evening its formal notification to Congress of
Friday’s drone strike that killed Suleimani in Iraq. Many Democrats have
criticised Trump for failing to seek advance approval or to notify Congress of
the attack.
The
classified notification was sent under a US law requiring the administration to
notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action
or imminent actions.
Nancy
Pelosi, the speaker of the House, said in a statement that the White House
notification about the attack “prompts serious and urgent questions about the
timing, manner and justification of the administration’s decision to engage in
hostilities against Iran”.
It was
expected that Suleimani’s body will be taken to Tehran and finally to his home
town, Kerman, on Tuesday.
Elsewhere
in the Middle East, reactions were in sharp contrast. In northern Syria, where
Suleimani proved pivotal in saving Bashar al-Assad from defeat, there were
celebrations. Sweets were handed out in some towns.
“This
general was the devil himself,” said Sobhih Mustafa, in the town of Maarat
al-Numan. “His legacy will be written in blood.”
Meanwhile,
Iran claimed that the US had sent a note to Tehran through the Swiss embassy,
which acts as an intermediary between the two foes, calling for a “proportional
response” to the killing of Suleimani. “The Swiss, who represent US interests
[in Iran], brought a very unwise message from the Americans, which received a
firm response,” Zarif, said on TV. “The Americans made a wrong move and are now
worried about its consequences.”
The deputy
commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig Gen Ali Fadavi, said
the US “resorted to such means as diplomacy this morning [Friday] and even told
us ‘if you want to take revenge, do it in a way that’s proportional to what we
did’”.
“But they
cannot decide anything [for us],” Fadavi added, according to the Iranian
English-language news site Iran Front Page. “That will take place at the most
opportune time and in the best manner possible.
“Soon we
will see that the Americans will not be there in the region,” he said.
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