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Qaani: We Partially Avenged Suleimani’s Killing by Expelling US Forces from the Region

Photo published by the Qom Seminary website of a meeting between Qaani and a group of clerics on Wednesday.
Photo published by the Qom Seminary website of a meeting between Qaani and a group of clerics on Wednesday.
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Qaani: We Partially Avenged Suleimani’s Killing by Expelling US Forces from the Region

Photo published by the Qom Seminary website of a meeting between Qaani and a group of clerics on Wednesday.
Photo published by the Qom Seminary website of a meeting between Qaani and a group of clerics on Wednesday.

IRGC foreign operations’ official, Esmail Qaani, said that his forces partially avenged the assassination of Al-Quds commander, General Qassem Suleimani, by expelling US forces from the region.

 

“America, Israel and even NATO...are mobilizing to destroy Iran,” Qaani was quoted by Fars news agency as saying, during a meeting with young clerics in Qom.

 

He added: “America retreats every day and shows signs of decline.”

 

When asked about the “time of revenge for the blood” of his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani, Qaani pointed to previous statements by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, saying that part of the revenge was “the expulsion of the American forces in the region.”

 

The former commander of Al-Quds Force was killed by a US strike moments after his arrival at Baghdad airport in early 2020. Suleimani’s killing came months after he obtained the highest military rank from Khamenei because of the role of his forces in the Syria and Iraq war.

 

Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to “strongly” avenge the assassination of the senior military official. Those threats targeted former US President Donald Trump, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the former US Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, in addition to generals in the US army.

 

In November, the US State Department informed members of Congress that “Iranian threats” against Pompeo and Hook “remain” on US soil. Reports last year noted that providing the two officials with around-the-clock protection would cost more than $2 million a month.

 

Tehran, which has solid relations with Baghdad, opposes the US military presence on its borders in Iraq and the Gulf, saying that Western military intervention is the main cause of insecurity in the region.

 

“Iraq should not allow the presence of Americans on its soil, not even one American,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said during his meeting with Iraqi President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid last week.

 

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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
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Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)

Israel's effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favor of cruise missiles and glide bombs.
The Israeli Army said its Oct. 26 raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defenses in three waves of strikes.
Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran's nuclear program, according to Reuters.
Tehran defends such targets with “a huge variety” of anti-aircraft systems, said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at London's Royal United Services Institute.
Cruise missiles are easier targets for dense, integrated air defenses than ballistic missiles are.
But ballistic missiles are often fired from known launch points, and most cannot change course in flight.
Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Israel Aerospace Industries Rampage get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles - weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude.
“The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defenses,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
“The downside - accuracy - looks to have been largely solved,” he said.
Ground-launched ballistic missiles - which Iran used to attack Israel twice this year, and which both Ukraine and Russia have used since Russia's invasion in 2022 - are common in the arsenals of many countries. So, too, are cruise missiles.
Because ALBMs are carried by aircraft, their launch points are flexible, helping strike planners.
“The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them,” said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel's missile defenses.
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defenses. In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Patriot PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia's Khinzhals.
Many countries, including the United States and Britain, experimented with ALBMs during the Cold War. Only Israel, Russia and China are known to field the weapons now.
The US tested a hypersonic ALBM, the Lockheed Martin AGM-183, but it received no funding for the 2025 fiscal year.
Because it has a large arsenal of cruise missiles and other types of long-range strike weapons, Washington has otherwise shown little interest in ALBMs.
A US Air Force official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ALBMs are not used in Air Force operations.
Raytheon's SM-6, an air-defense missile that has been repurposed for air-to-air and surface-to-surface missions, also has been tested as an air-launched anti-ship weapon, said a senior US defense technical analyst, who declined to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
In tests the missile was able to strike a small target on land representing the center of mass of a destroyer, the analyst said. Publicly, the SM-6 is not meant for air-to-ground strikes.
Because ALBMs are essentially a combination of guidance, warheads and rocket motors, many countries that have precision weapons already have the capability to pursue them, a defense industry executive said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“This is a clever way of taking a common set of technologies and components and turning it into a very interesting new weapon that gives them far more capability, and therefore options, at a reasonable price,” the executive said.