TEHRAN – Commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force attended a closed session of the Iranian Parliament on Wednesday during which he predicted that the U.S. withdrawal from the region will happen soon.

Ahmed Alireza Beigi, a lawmaker who was present at the session, said General Esmail Ghaani briefed the lawmakers on the latest developments in the region.

“General Ghaani said that due to the actions on the agenda of the resistance forces, the decline of U.S. forces in the region is imminent,” Alireza Beigi quoted the general as saying in at the Parliament session.

‘The enemy’s bones are being crushed’

Ebrahim Rezayee, another lawmaker who is a member of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, gave further details of what happened during the Wednesday session, which was held just a few days before the assassination anniversary of Ghaani’s predecessor General Qassem Soleimani.

“General Ghaani underlined the necessity of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the region in the first place,” Rezayee said, adding, “The commander of Quds Force underlined in the closed session that the enemy’s bones are being crushed.”

According to Rezayee, General Ghaani stressed that the strengthening of the resistance front was one of the results of General Soleimani's leadership of the Quds Force.

A Twitter account attributed to General Ghaani also provided similar details of the session.

“The enemy’s bones are being crushed. The Americans have received both soft and hard slaps. But the main goal of avenging the blood of Haj Qassem Soleimani is to eliminate America from the region,” the account said.

It also issued a stern warning to the U.S. officials involved in the assassination of General Soleimani.

“I warn the U.S. president, CIA director, secretary of defense, secretary of state and other American officials involved in the assassination of martyr Soleimani that they must learn the clandestine lifestyle of Salman Rushdie because the Islamic Republic will avenge the blood of martyr Soleimani which was shed unrightfully,” the Ghaani Twitter account quoted him as saying in the Wednesday session.

Over the past months, several Iranian officials have vowed to take revenge on those who were involved in the assassination of General Soleimani.

“Of course, revenge will be taken on those who ordered it and the murderers,” said the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in a recent meeting with a group of officials who are responsible for commemorating the first anniversary of the assassination of the general.

The Leader said Iran has slapped the U.S. in the face by launching a missile strike on the U.S. airbase of Ain al-Assad in western Iraq earlier this year.

But the tougher slap, the Leader asserted, would be expelling the U.S. troops from the West Asia region.

Ever since General Soleimani was assassinated on January 3, 2020, in Baghdad along with his comrade Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy chief of Iraq’ Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Iranian officials have placed the goal of expelling the U.S. from the region high on their foreign policy agenda and they still insist that the U.S. must leave the region.

PA/PA