TEHRAN - The United States faced humiliation and defeat in West Asia at the hands of Iran and the resistance movement, Iran’s ambassador to Damascus has said.

Mehdi Sobhani made the remarks in an interview with the Beirut-based Alahednews website while reiterating Iran’s unlimited support for the resistance movement.

Iran’s legendary commander General Qassem Soleimani and the resistance path that he organized thwarted the U.S. plots and changed the power equation in favor of the regional nations, Sobhani remarked.

General Soleimani and his comrades, including deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), were assassinated in a U.S. drone strike on January 3, 2020 near Baghdad’s international airport.

Ambassador Sobhani said General Soleimani played a significant role in improving Iran’s national and international power.

Commemoration ceremonies held to mark the third anniversary of the hero’s assassination conveyed the message that he is still alive in the hearts of people across the world with his ideas and principles.

General Soleimani belonged not only to the Iranian people, but to all those who support freedom and the oppressed nations around the world, the diplomat remarked.

“General Soleimani is alive because the battle is still going on, and God willing, we will win in the end,” Sobhani added.

The ambassador emphasized that Iran has managed to become a leading power in West Asia region over the past two decades thanks to General Soleimani’s ideas.

In fact, he said, General Soleimani succeeded to change the equation of power in favor of the axis of resistance against the axis of evil, Press TV reported.

Sobhani stressed that the U.S. administration committed a terrorist crime by assassinating General Soleimani because he had inflicted successive defeats on America in the region which made Washington unable to draw regional equations based on its own engineering.

Speaking at the Asian Parliamentary Association (APA) forum in Antalya (Turkey) on Monday, Iran’s Parliament speaker called the assassination of General Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC Quds Force, as a clear example of “state terrorism”.

The assassins of the commander are “delusional” if they think they can eliminate his lofty goals and principles through their act, the diplomat emphasized.

Yuram Abdullah Weiler, an American critic and writer, praises General Soleimani as an unmatched commander.

“General Hajj Qassem Soleimani was a unique, multi-dimensional individual who possessed impeccable moral character, unmatched leadership capability and military strategy skills in rare combination with a warm, caring and self-sacrificing personality.”

Weiler says the commander was honing the cutting edge of the Islamic Resistance movement.

“He was the embodiment of an exemplary Islamic leader, concerned for his soldiers, his country, Iran, and the entire Islamic Ummah, attaining martyrdom while honing the cutting edge of the Islamic Resistance movement,” Weiler tells the Tehran Times.

Robert Fantina, an American-Canadian peace and social activist, also tells the Tehran Times that General Soleimani was assassinated in the U.S. terrorist attack “but the principles he stood for are” are alive.