TEHRAN, Jan. 09 (MNA) – Missile attacks at one of the most important US bases in the context of "Shahid Soleimani Operation" were the start of a major operation that would continue throughout the region, said Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh
.“Missile attacks on one of the most important US bases were the start of a major operation that would continue throughout the region”, he said, adding, “We didn't seek to kill. We sought to hit the enemy's military machine.”
“The assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani was one of US’ greatest historical and strategic mistakes,” Hajizadeh noted.
He went on to say, “We fired 13 missiles at US military bases in Iraq, but we were ready to fire several hundred missiles in one or two hours.”
“We thought it might take two or three days or a week if two sides did not practice self-restraint, so we had prepared several thousand missiles,” added the commander.
Stating, “We were not seeking to kill anyone in the operation, however, tens of people were killed and some were injured, which its statistics will be known,” he said, “If we were going to kill more, we could design the operation so that at least 500 military forces be killed, and if they responded in the next step, we would have changed our position and had no obligation to save the lives of US troops. We would have killed at least 5,000 in the second and third steps within 48 hours.”
Hajizadeh said, “We thought the Americans would attack, but they didn't,” adding, “They were waiting for a slap in their face and they became a little calm when they faced it.”
Emphasizing that all of Iran’s missiles hit the targets, he said, “The Americans did not shoot any shot despite having ample facilities, they could not confront.”
The United States terrorist forces assassinated Lt. General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) — better known as Hashd al-Sha’abi — in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday.
In the first step of hard revenge on the US over the assassination of Lt. General Soleimani Iran's IRGC force fired tens of ballistic missiles at Ain Al-Assad base in Iraq on Wednesday. Ain al-Assad is an Iraqi airbase that the US terrorist forces are stationed there.
He also said that identifying targets was an important issue for us but very quickly we identified from where the US attack had been carried out against us.
According to him the other reason why Iran chose Ain al-Assad airbase as its target is that the airbase is 170 km far from Baghdad and this minimizes the possibility of endangering civilians' lives.