TEHRAN — The victory of Joe Biden against the incumbent-President Donald Trump in the recent U.S. presidential election will not change the United States’ Iran policy, says the daughter of Iran’s assassinated general Qassem Soleimani.

“There’s no difference between Biden and Trump, they are the same guy. They are following the same policy, there’s no difference between them. Trump ordered the killing of my father, but Biden supported that, so there’s no difference,” Zeinab Soleimani told Russia Today in an interview that is to be aired on Wednesday.

U.S. President-elect Biden has signaled that he will re-enter the United States into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was abandoned by Trump in 2018 in pursuit of a tough economic confrontation with the Islamic republic.

Soleimani said Biden’s background leaves a lot of room for doubt, because it was Barack Obama’s administration that facilitated the creation of Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group in West Asia.

“The problem we have with America is their policy, this will not change. They are the same people, with the same mind, the same way. And each one is worse than the other one,” said Zeinab Soleimani.

Moreover, U.S. policy towards Iran has remained pretty much the same for decades already, she argued, and the change of the figurehead in the White House does not really matter.

“The problem we have with America is their policy, this will not change. They are the same people, with the same mind, the same way. And each one is worse than the other one.”

Trump’s decision to order the assassination of General Soleimani stemmed from the fact that her father jeopardized U.S. plans in the region, invoking fury in Washington, she said. 

“My father did his job so well and made them so angry. You are seeing every plan they are making in the Middle East is destroyed. Everywhere they are trying to enter and hurt Iran they fail. Of course, for them my father is a big monster, but my father is a savior.”

On January 3, Trump ordered drone strikes that martyred General Soleimani, chief of the IRGC Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

In the early hours of January 8, the IRGC attacked Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq, where U.S. forces were stationed, as part of its promised “tough revenge” for the U.S. terror attack.

Iran has vowed to target whoever had a role in the cowardly assassination of General Soleimani. “This is a serious message,” IRGC Chief Major General Hossein Salami said back in September.

“These threats are serious and we’re not engaging in a war of words,” Salami said, adding, “Rather, we’ll leave everything to the field of action.”

Zeinab Soleimani, however, believes that her father’s assassination did not constitute a victory for the U.S., but actually backfired. It invoked more anger and hatred towards Washington in Iran, as well as in other countries of the region. The killing has made more people want to follow in Soleimani’s steps and fight the U.S., she warned.

“After killing my father, America thought that everything will be stopped, because they killed General Soleimani, the power of the Middle East. But they are so wrong,” she said. “They are so wrong in thinking this will be the end of General Soleimani, this is the beginning.”

Soleimani also touched upon one of the most recent hostile acts against Iran, namely the killing of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated near Tehran late in November. Those behind the murder are certainly “not human”, given how the scientist was slain in cold blood for merely working for his country, she asserted.

“They’ve killed him so easily in his own country in front of… his wife,” she said. “How dare they come to our country and kill people so easily in the street?”

On November 27, the convoy of Fakhrizadeh suddenly came under attack on a highway in the small city of Absard in Damavand County, about 40 kilometers east of the capital Tehran. The scientist lost his life during the attack. 

Iranian officials were quick to point the finger at Israel, which has carried out many assassination operations against Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade.

MH/PA