For the second consecutive night, Katyusha rockets hit the center of Baghdad, causing six injuries, according to Pan-Arab satellite television report Al Jazeera. Three rockets fell into the super-fortified Green Zone, where several embassies are located, including the American one. Two in particular struck near the diplomatic headquarters. Three others have fallen in the Jadriya area, according to military sources.
Meanwhile Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, quoted by Farsnews, threatens: " If the United States does not withdraw its forces from the region, it will face another Vietnam ." "Despite the boast of the ignorant president of the United States, Iran will take retaliatory action against the stupid move by Americans that will make them repent," he stressed.
The US military must be driven out of Iraq: the Iraqi Parliament asked the Baghdad government on Sunday. The first response to the American blitz in which General Qassem Soleimani was killed on Friday night is political, but potentially more incisive than the expected Iranian retaliation. With another counter move, Tehran announced a further reduction in its obligations related to the 2015 nuclear arrangement, reserving the right to make an unlimited number of centrifuges for uranium enrichment operational.
Conte-Salih phone call in which the prime minister 'expressed to the Iraqi president the concern and the consequent European effort aimed at exerting maximum diplomatic pressure for a lowering of tension in the country and to stop the spiral triggered in recent days'.
But the tension remains very high. If the US makes a new attack after the Iranian retaliation for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, Tehran "will wipe Israel off the map". This was stated by Mohsen Rezai, former head of the Revolutionary Guards, currently secretary of the powerful Council for the determination of the choices , a body of mediation between the various institutions of the state. "US troops will soon be expelled from the region," added Rezai, quoted by the Fars agency, speaking tonight at a commemoration of Soleimani in Tehran. "If Iran were to attack any American person or target, the United States will also strike disproportionately immediately": this is Donald Trump's new threat on Twitter. "These posts will serve as a notification to Congress," adds Trump, who states that "no legal notice is required, and yet it is provided!"
Trump had previously stated that if Iran had hit Americans or American assets, the US would have hit very hard. Explaining that the United States has already identified 52 Iranian sites that can be attacked very quickly: 52 like the number of "American hostages taken from Iran many years ago" in the US embassy in Tehran. From Tehran, on the other hand, Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami, quoted by Irna, has asked all countries of the world "to take an appropriate position against the terrorist moves of the United States, if they want to avoid repeating hateful and unprecedented acts such as the killing the general "
Meanwhile, a human tide has invaded the streets of Ahvaz for the first funeral procession in memory of General Qassem Soleimani , killed on Friday in an American raid on Iraq, in the first of three days of mourning proclaimed in Iran. At the procession people waved red flags (the color of the "blood of the martyrs"), green flags (the color of Islam) and white flags decorated with religious slogans, as well as portraits of the general, crying and shouting "Death to America" . State television broadcast a live broadcast of the parade with the screen in mourning.
A truck decorated with flowers and covered with a cloth with the dome of the Rock of Jerusalem drawn carried the coffins of Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, an Iraqi pro-Iranian military leader killed in the same action, making his way very slowly through the crowd that came to cry in the center of Ahvaz, even from nearby cities, the military commander most loved by the people. Many portraits, raised by the crowd, of the general who commanded the Quds force, the unit of the Revolutionary Guards for operations abroad. The semi-official agency Isna speaks of an "innumerable" number of participants, the Mehr agency, close to the ultra-conservative, of an "incredible number" and the state TV of a "glorious crowd".
A city in southwestern Iran with a large Arab minority, Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan, a martyred province of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which the general's star began to shine . The tribute to Soleimani will be repeated in Machhad, in the northeast, in Tehran, Sunday and Monday, then in Qom (in the center of the country), before the burial scheduled for Tuesday in the general's hometown, Kerman, in the southeast.