TEHRAN — Iran’s Foreign Ministry has said Iran will never forget or forgive the U.S. assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, saying West Asia has suffered enough from Washington’s interventions.

“By cowardly assassinating Gen Soleimani, US committed a grave mistake,” the Foreign Ministry wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.

It added: “Iraqi MPs' vote to expel US troops is the beginning of the end of the malign presence in our region. Our region has suffered enough by the interventions of the US outlaw regime.”

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

Iran has vowed to target whoever had a role in the cowardly assassination of General Soleimani, who was on a peace mission to Iraq when he was targeted by the U.S. military.

Tensions have risen between Iran and the U.S. ahead of the first anniversary of the assassination.

Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah suggested on Sunday night that the assassination was carried out at the request of the Israeli and Saudi regimes.

“The criminal assassination of General Soleimani was not only an American crime, but I believe that Israel and Saudi Arabia were culprits in this crime as well, even if their role was just to provoke Washington to commit it,” Nasrallah said in an exclusive interview with al-Mayadeen television network.

“Hajj Qassem was a very special person on the humanitarian and moral levels… he had a special charisma and a strong ability to have an influence on anyone who knows him,” he highlighted.

“Militarily, Hajj Qassem was the frontline man not the man in the operation room, he was the many of strategy and tactics… Politically and culturally, he was well-educated in various fields,” the Hezbollah leader emphasized.

MH/PA