As Iranian officials continue to seek justice against former President Donald Trump and at least two of his top officials over the killing of leading military commander Major General Qassem Soleimani three years ago, a current U.S. official said that President Joe Biden‘s administration was committed to ensuring such plots did not come to fruition.
Top figures from Iran’s political, judicial and military institutions marked the third anniversary of Soleimani’s slaying by emphasizing their desire to hold accountable those behind the deadly U.S. strike at Iraq’s Baghdad International Airport.
Among these Iranian voices was Kazem Gharibabadi, who serves as the vice president of the country’s Judiciary for International Affairs and secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, who revealed Tuesday that some 94 U.S. citizens have so far been indicted over the attack.
Of them, he identified “the three main accused” as Trump, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Central Command chief Kenneth McKenzie, warning “no person will be immune from judicial proceedings” as Tehran accused Washington of not cooperating with requests over the case.
Reached for comment on the issue, a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek that “Iran continues to plot against U.S. citizens and interests as so-called revenge for the death of Qassem Soleimani, including by threatening current and former U.S. officials.”
“So let us be clear: The United States will protect and defend its citizens,” the spokesperson added. “This includes present and former U.S. government officials.”
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In addition to the legal warnings, Iranian military officials have emphasized it was incumbent upon their armed forces to seek retribution as well.
A statement issued Monday by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC], whose elite Quds Force was led by Soleimani at the time of his killing, declared that taking “revenge against the perpetrators and killers of the martyr Soleimani as soon as possible is a definite and inviolable manner.”
That same day, Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Gharaei Ashtiani asserted that “avenging the blood of General Soleimani is on the permanent agenda of the country’s armed forces, and the commanders and perpetrators of this cowardly assassination will receive their disgraceful punishment at a time and place they do not even think about, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will determine its time and place.”
“The fingers of the soldiers of this land are on the trigger for that historical moment,” he added.
Senior Iranian officers also weighed in, including IRGC Major General Hossein Salami, who told a news outlet associated with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office that “at present, the revenge has turned into a strategy, a wish, an aspiration and a starting point,” and Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammed Hossein Baqeri, who asserted that “revenge against the masterminds and perpetrators of General Soleimani’s assassination will never be removed from the agenda of the youths of the Muslim world and his devotees across the world.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who led Iran’s judiciary before winning last year’s national election, eulogized Soleimani on Tuesday, as did Khamenei himself two days earlier.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran soared under Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and major world powers in 2018 and instituted heavy sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Trump justified the decision to kill Soleimani by citing an alleged plot by the Iranian major general to harm U.S. personnel and property amidst a violent series of escalations between U.S. forces and Iraqi militias aligned with Iran.
Though the Trump administration had designated the IRGC to be a terrorist organization in the year preceding the strike, Soleimani held an official military position and was said by Iranian officials to be involved in a diplomatic endeavor alongside his ill-fated entourage in Iraq, which included Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces second-in-command Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
As such, Tehran has argued Soleimani was immune to hostilities under the United Nations‘ 1973 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons, Including Diplomatic Agents.
At home, Soleimani has long been considered a war hero due to his efforts battling Sunni Muslim jihadi groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS in Iraq and Syria), though incidents involving the defacing of posters bearing his image have emerged as Iran continues to be rocked by monthslong protests over the death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman died in September 2022 while in custody of the since-dissolved Guidance Patrol tasked with governing the nation’s strict morality codes, which include the mandatory wearing of hijabs for women.
Soleimani’s reputation abroad is controversial. While he is credited with playing a leading role in the battle against ISIS even prior to U.S. intervention against the group, he also mobilized insurgent efforts to drive U.S. occupying forces out of Iraq following the 2003 invasion and is accused by critics of provoking sectarian tensions in the countries in which he operated.
In what is widely believed to be up to two decades of service as head of the Quds Force, Soleimani helped to establish an international network of largely Shiite Muslim militias known as the “Axis of Resistance” spanning a number of Middle Eastern nations and with members hailing from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani was also met with a polarizing reaction both domestically and internationally.
Biden, then vying for the Democratic candidacy to challenge Trump for the Oval Office, cast doubt on Trump’s calculus at the time, acknowledging that Soleimani “deserved to be brought to justice” while at the same time accusing the then-president of pursuing a “hugely escalatory move,” which he likened to having “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”
Iraqi officials strongly condemned the attack on their soil and, a year later, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council also issued a warrant for Trump’s arrest.
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The immediate Iranian response to the killing saw the IRGC launch dozens of missiles days later at Iraq’s Ain Al Asad Air Base, where more than 100 U.S. troops would suffer traumatic brain injuries as a result of the barrage. In the heat of the retaliation, an Iranian surface-to-air missile system shot down a Ukrainian airliner, killing 176 people.
Newsweek was first to confirm both Soleimani’s death and Iran’s role in the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which Iranian officials later said was done in error amid anticipation of U.S. retaliation and apologized.
Iranian officials, including Soleimani’s successor, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, have vowed to exact a further “hard revenge” against those behind the U.S. operation. As graphics and animations surfaced envisioning an Iranian assassination of Trump during last year’s second anniversary of Soleimani’s death, a U.S. Secret Service spokesperson told Newsweek it was taking threats against Trump’s life “seriously.”
Frictions between the U.S. and Iran remain severe since Biden took office, with the president following in his predecessor’s footsteps by ordering several rounds of strikes against Iraqi militias over attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.
Efforts to restore the nuclear deal, reached at a time when Biden served as vice president, have stalled, and the current administration has expanded sanctions on the Islamic Republic, which has sought closer ties with top U.S. rivals China and Russia.
Washington has also accused Tehran of orchestrating assassination attempts against activists abroad, a charge vehemently denied by Iran, which has argued that it was the U.S. that was ultimately responsible for dealing out extrajudicial punishment.
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