TEHRAN — Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has said ridding the region of American forces will be a retaliation for Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani’s blood.

“I don’t remember that we’ve ever had a triple-urgency motion passed in the parliament,” Larijani said on Tuesday, after the parliament designated the U.S. military as a terrorist organization, according to Mehr.

“The important point is that the response to Haj Qassem Soleimani’s blood should be [measures] to make American forces flee from the region and go somewhere else,” he said.

“This step has been taken by the Iraqi parliament,” he added.

This is only the beginning, the parliament speaker said. “They must leave the region.”

Soleimani, the head of the IRGC Quds Force, was martyred in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport on Friday morning by the U.S.

The U.S. airstrike also martyred Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and some other resistance forces.

The Pentagon had announced that General Soleimani was killed on Trump’s order.

According to the New York Times, the top Iranian general was killed when an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.

The strike was a serious escalation of Trump’s growing confrontation with Tehran, which began almost a week ago when U.S. forces conducted drone strikes on locations of the PMU forces in Iraq, killing at least 25 individuals and leaving another 51 injured.

Referring to Soleimani’s massive funeral procession, Larijani said the Iranian nation slapped the U.S. in the face.

“People expressed their anger at the U.S. crime by holding massive funeral processions for the martyred commander of IRGC Quds Force Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani and his companions in Iraqi cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Kadhimiya , as well the Iranian cities of Ahvaz, Mashhad, Tehran, Qom, and Kerman,” he said.

He described the general’s assassination as a “barbaric” move by Trump and a “terrorist, military operation.”

“You have endangered the security of the region by doing this and must be held accountable,” the parliament speaker said, addressing Trump.

“It is time for a crushing response.”

Following Larijani’s speech, Iranian lawmakers chanted anti-U.S. slogans at the parliament.

MH/PA