Iran has every right to kill murderous war criminals US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to avenge Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani's assassination, according to an American scholar and political commentator. RNA - Dr. Kevin Barrett said the United States claims that it has a right to preemptively kill anyone it considers a terrorist, so other countries, including Iran, can enjoy the same right and kill US government officials in a retaliatory move as they consorted with a terrorist group to assassinate the country’s top anti-terror commander.
Barrett, a former academic based in Wisconsin, made the remark in a phone interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a US media report stating that the US’ point man on Iran had met with a representative of the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group both before and after Washington’s assassination of the senior Iranian commander.
American news and opinion website The Daily Beast reported that Brian Hook, the US’s special representative for Iran and senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had held the meetings with Robert G. Joseph, who represents the so-called National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), whose website calls itself the MKO’s “umbrella coalition.”
In his phone interview with Press TV, Barrett said the US has been supporting the MKO terror group on and off over the years, describing the MKO as a “fanatical and extreme” terror cult that combined worst features from the Daesh and al-Qaeda terrorist groups.
The MKO has conducted a litany of assassinations and bombings against Iranian officials and civilians since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It notoriously sided with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s Western-backed war of 1980-88 against the Islamic Republic.
Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist assaults since the Revolution’s victory, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the MKO’s acts of terror.
The terrorist outfit was on the US’s list of terrorist organizations until 2012.
“The people of Iran hate the MKO, virtually anybody in Iran hates the MKO, they are less popular in Iran than al-Qaeda is in the United States,” Barrett said.
The US assassinated General Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and a number of others in a set of drone strikes targeting Baghdad’s civilian airport on January 3.
General Soleimani, who had earned reputation as the region’s most popular anti-terror military figure, was on an official visit to the Iraqi capital when the attack took place. The operation was conducted with the authorization of US President Donald Trump and the US Department of Defense took responsibility for the assassination.
“It’s stupid from the perspective of these [US] leaders who are consorting with the world’s worst terrorists to carry out this kind of assassination. The United States government asserted has the right to kill terrorists preemptively anywhere in the world and in deed to blow up huge numbers of innocent people in order to even just kill one so-called terrorist without any form of due process. If the US government has the right, so do other governments and others around the world who are fighting terrorism,” Barrett said.
“So if the US government has the right so do the other governments, and others around the world who are fighting terrorism. And, that means that Brian Hook and Robert Joseph and the people they have worked with on this are very much in a position where anyone who wants to fight terrorism should kill them, and that means the governments around the world, including the Iranian government which has the right to retaliate in kind for what happened to General Soleimani, absolutely has the right to kill Brian hook, to kill Robert Joseph, to kill Mike Pompeo and maybe even Donald Trump. These people are murderous war criminals and consorting with this terrorist group that’s killed 10,000 Iranians; they are far worse than the al-Qaeda,” he added.
According to Press TV, the American scholar also warned that, “These people had better watch out because for the rest of their lives they are going to have to deal with the likelihood of an eventual just retaliation.”
The US assassination of the top Iranian commander sent shock waves across the world while, at the same time, forging greater unity in the region against US interventionism, with insistent calls for revenge being echoed across the Muslim world.
Iraqi lawmakers also took action by unanimously approving a bill, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.