TEHRAN – The daughter of Iran’s top general, Martyr Qassem Soleimani, has hailed her father as the “conqueror of hearts” and a highly charismatic field commander.

In an exclusive interview with Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television network on Tuesday, Zeinab Soleimani said what distinguished her father was that he was a “strong military field commander with very strong charisma, clever ... and besides that he had a remarkably compassionate and affectionate heart as well.”

She said the top commander “used to capture the hearts of people.”

“My father used to find his way through people’s hearts, especially those who worked with them and those close to him,” she added.

Soleimani pointed to his father’s field presence alongside other military forces was the result of his “belief in the necessity of standing by the oppressed.”

“He did not differentiate between the Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Palestinian or Yemeni people. Any aggression against people, their money and their honor was a red line for him,” she remarked.

She also said that the issue of Palestine and the Palestinian people was “very important” to General Soleimani, and stressed that “he used all his capabilities to serve the Palestinian cause and the result is that we see today the strength of the Palestinian resistance movement.”

Soleimani concluded that those behind the brutal assassination of General Soleimani would pay the price “in the most horrific possible way.”

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.”

Millions of Iranians took part in the funeral for General Soleimani (commonly referred to as Sardar Soleimani) in Ahwaz, Mashhad, Qom, Tehran and Kerman, his native city where he was buried.

In an interview with Russia Today earlier this month, Zeinab Soleimani said 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.

“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,” she said.

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

U.S. President-elect Biden served as vice president under President Obama. 

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.”

MH/PA