Iran will punish Americans wherever they are within reach of the Islamic Republic in retaliation for the killing of military commander Qasem Soleimani, Tasnim news agency quoted a senior Revolutionary Guards commander as saying, Reuters reported on Saturday morning. General Gholamali Abuhamzeh, the commander of the Guards in the southern province of Kerman, raised the prospect of possible attacks on ships in the Gulf. Iran reserved the right to take revenge against the United States for the death of Soleimani, he said in comments made late on Friday and reported on Saturday by Tasnim. “The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there … vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since long time ago … some 35 U.S. targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach,” he said. Also on Saturday morning, a Lebanese Hezbollah official said the response of the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” to the killing of Soleimani will be decisive, al-Mayadeen TV said on Saturday. The leader of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc in Lebanon, Mohamed Raad, was referring to a swathe of Iran-backed groups from Lebanon to Yemen which have increased Tehran’s military influence in the region. Raad said the United States “made an error” in targeting Soleimani and that they will recognize that in the coming days, the channel reported. Solemani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with at least 10 other people, were killed in an attack by US forces in Baghdad on Friday. “At the direction of the President, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the Pentagon wrote in a statement. In a speech to the American people, US President Donald Trump called Soleimani the “number one terrorist anywhere in the world.”
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