Iran puts cross-hairs on 35 American targets in the Gulf after drone strike kills top general
Iranian commander warns US warships are targets after White House ordered lethal attack on military leader and tensions rise
Iran yesterday warned that 35 American targets have been identified as the country’s leaders vowed vengeance for the killing of its most powerful military commander.
The threat came as three rocket attacks on American targets shook the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The attacks targeted the highly-fortified Green Zone in the city as well as an air base housing US troops. No casualties were reported.
Earlier, a coffin carrying the body of Iranian military leader Qassim Soleimani was driven through the streets of Baghdad with thousands of mourners chanting “death to America”.
He was killed on Friday by a US air strike at Baghdad airport ordered by Donald Trump, who said the general was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks on US diplomats and military personnel”.
Gholamali Abuhamzeh, a commander in the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards, yesterday warned of potential attacks on US warships in the Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast. More than 20 million barrels of oil pass through the channel each day, a quarter of global oil production.
He said: “The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there. Thirty-five vital American positions in the region are within the reach of the Islamic Republic, and Tel Aviv – the US’s heart and life – is also within our reach.”
Soleimani, along with paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al Muhandi and eight others, was killed in a drone strike on his motorcade near Baghdad’s airport. The head of Iran’s elite Quds Force was regarded as the second most powerful figure in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He was the architect of Iran’s regional policy of mobilising militias across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including in the war against Islamic State.
Soleimani was also blamed for attacks on US troops and American allies over nearly two decades. The Pentagon said Soleimani had approved violent protests at the US embassy in Baghdad last week, which were in response to US airstrikes that had killed more than 25 fighters from an Iran-backed militia.
But Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said the US committed a “grave mistake” in killing Iranian Soleimani.
Rouhani, a post-graduate student at Glasgow Caledonian University in the 1990s, promised retaliation as he offered his condolences to Soleimani’s