The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, was “planning terrorist attacks targeting American interests and other countries before targeting him.”
“The killing of Soleimani was a service to the stability of the region and the hand of Tehran ceasing to destabilize the security of the neighboring countries,” a ministry official told The Eastern Herald .
The American official’s statement came in response to the statement of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of Soleimani, and said, “The targeting was within the framework of the strategy to target terrorists in the world.”
Agnes Calamard, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on executions and extrajudicial killings, said the Soleimani killing was “illegal”.
Soleimani was killed in early January by an American drone strike that targeted a car he was traveling in with the leader of the Iraqi popular crowd, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis.
The United States has repeatedly said that Soleimani is responsible for attacks targeting American soldiers in Iraq and other areas and that he was planning to target its forces in the region.
