Spokesman of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif said that the US assassination of IRGC Qods Force Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani will eventually lead to the expulsion of Washington's troops from the region. RNA - Like the way General Soleimani's mission was to reinforce the Resistance to counter the Zionist regime, his demise, too, was also a help to that cause, General Sharif said, addressing a ceremony to commemorate General Soleimani in Orumiyeh, Northwestern Iran.
He said that all the plots of the US have failed because of the Resistance and General Soleimani's efforts.
After the US assassinated General Soleimani, General Sharif said, the IRGC slapped them in the face by targeting their most advanced airbase in Iraq, Ain al-Assad, which disgraced them so their expulsion from the region is a certain fate for them.
Lieutenant General Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike on Baghdad International Airport in Iraq on January 3.
The airstrike also martyred Deputy Commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The two were martyred in an American airstrike that targeted their vehicle on the road to the airport.
Five Iranian and five Iraqi militaries were martyred by missiles fired by the US drone at Baghdad International Airport.
On January 8, the IRGC Aerospace Force started heavy ballistic missile attacks on US Ein Al-Assad airbase in Southwestern Iraq near the border with Syria and a US operated airbase in Erbil in retaliation for the US assassination of General Soleimani.
Ein Al-Assad is an airbase with a 4km runway at 188m altitude from sea levels, which is the main and the largest US airbase in Iraq. Early reports said the radar systems and missile defense shields in Ein Al-Assad failed to operate and intercept the Iranian missiles. Unofficial reports said the US army's central radar systems at Ein Al-Assad had been jammed by electronic warfare.
The second IRGC reprisal attack targeted a US military base near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan Region in the second leg of "Martyr Soleimani" reprisal operation.
Iraq said the attacks had not taken any toll from its army men stationed at these two bases. The US army had blocked entrance into Ein Al-Assad to everyone, including the Iraqi army.
It was the first direct attack on the US army ever since world war two.
The IRGC officials said none of the missiles had been intercepted.
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