TEHRAN - Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Expediency Council, has said the Western Asia region will always be tense until the “American terrorists” leave it.

“As long as the terrorist regime of America is present in the West Asia region, it will not be calm,” Rezaei told the Tasnim news agency. “To achieve calm, we must expel these terrorists from the region.”

He said the presence of the American forces in the region is aimed at creating tensions in a bid to protect Israel. According to Rezaei, what “American terrorists” do in Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria is a long-term plot to create tensions and wars in the region to protect “the fake Zionist regime.”

“The U.S. terrorist regime is present in the region and uses inhumane means such as sanctions and war to weaken, besiege and capture the Muslim countries of the region,” the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pointed out.

He also noted, “The Western Asia region would be calm when the terrorist U.S. regime leaves the region; the coming years will be the year of terrorist Americans fleeing the region.”

The idea of expelling U.S. forces from the region has picked up steam since the U.S. assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general earlier this year. The general, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated in an American drone strike on January 3 near Baghdad’s international airport. In response, Iran showered a U.S. base in Western Iraq with missiles. However, Iran’s response did not end and Iranian officials said on many occasions that the expulsion of American forces from the region would be the final revenge for the assassination of the IRGC’s Quds Force commander. Recently, Hossein Salami, the chief of IRGC warned that Iran will target everyone involved in the Soleimani assassination.

“We will target those who played a direct or indirect role in the martyrdom of the great general Hajj Qassem Soleimani,” Salami said. “Our promise to take revenge for the martyrdom of General Soleimani is decisive, serious, and completely genuine.”