Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the international community must express severe condemnation of the 2020 assassination of top anti-terror Iranian commander General Qassem Suleimani, who was martyred in a US drone strike in Iraq last January.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, Maduro denounced the US assassination as a horrific crime.
“Is this really a world we want, where the White House issues an order to kill a hero of the struggle against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon?” Maduro inquired.
General Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was assassinated near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020, in a drone strike directly ordered by former US president Donald Trump. Suleimani’s companions, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were also martyred in the attack.
The Iranian general’s assassination highlighted the necessity of expelling all US forces from Iraq, with Iraqi resistance groups pursuing that goal ever since.
“General Suleimani was a smiling and optimistic man. I thank God for ever meeting him,” the Venezuelan president said, recalling that Suleimani visited Caracas sometime between March and April 2019.
“We were in the midst of an electricity crisis orchestrated by imperialists against Venezuela’s national electrical power grid. We had conversations on several areas of cooperation, including electricity,” he said, stressing that all matters discussed were later put into action.
“He fought terrorism and savage criminals, who attacked ordinary people and the Axis of Resistance. He was a brave man,” Maduro asserted.
Venezuela’s president to visit Iran ‘very soon’
Maduro also said his South American country’s relations with the Islamic Republic have always been really good.
The Venezuelan president said he has agreed on several new cooperation agreements with his Iranian counterpart President Ebrahim Raeisi.
He explained that joint commissions are working on the new projects, adding that he will soon visit Iran to finalize the new deals.
“I am going to Tehran very soon, for a visit that President Raisi offered me, so that we meet in person, to hold conversations and sign new agreements … and speed up processes of cooperation,” Maduro said.
The Venezuelan president also revered Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei as a man of great wisdom and prudence.
In October, Raeisi hailed the expanding and friendly Iran-Venezuela ties, saying Tehran is determined to boost its relations with developing countries, especially nations that seek to maintain their independence.
“Latin America, especially Venezuela, is on the top of the Islamic Republic’s economic, diplomatic priorities, and we are determined to expand our ties with these countries,” Raeisi said during a meeting with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia in Tehran on October 18.
The Iranian president stressed the necessity of expanding Tehran-Caracas ties in different fields and underscored the importance of having “a clear and long-term plan” in order to strengthen the bilateral ties to their maximum.
Source: Iranian Agencies
