Iran Press/Iran news: The top commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh on Thursday in a news conference described the full details of Iran's missile attack on Ain Al-Assad airbase in western Iraq. The missile strike took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning 8 January.
Missile attacks on one of the most important US bases in the context of "Shahid Soleimani Operation" were the start of a major operation that would continue throughout the region, said Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
“Missile attacks on one of the most important US bases were the start of a major operation that would continue throughout the region”, he said, adding, “We didn't seek to kill. We sought to hit the enemy's military machine.”
“The assassination of Lt. Gen. Soleimani was one of America's greatest historic and strategic mistakes,” Hajizadeh noted.
He went on to say, “We fired 13 missiles at US military bases in Iraq, but we were ready to fire several hundred missiles in one or two hours.”
“We thought it might take two or three days or a week if two sides did not practice self-restraint, so we had prepared several thousand missiles,” added the commander.
Stating, “We were not seeking to kill anyone in the operation, however, tens of people were killed and some were injured, which its statistics will be known,” he said, “If we were going to kill more, we could design the operation so that at least 500 military forces be killed, and if they responded in the next step, we would have changed our position and had no obligation to save the lives of US troops. We would have killed at least 5,000 in the second and third steps within 48 hours.”
Hajizadeh said, “We thought the Americans would attack, but they didn't,” adding, “They were waiting for a slap in their face and they became a little calm when they faced it.”
Emphasizing that all of Iran’s missiles hit their intended targets, he said, “The Americans did not reply despite having ample facilities, they could not confront us.”
He also said identifying targets was an important issue for us but very quickly we identified from where the US attack had been carried out against us.
According to him the other reason why Iran chose Ain al-Assad airbase as its target is that the airbase is 170 km away from Baghdad, thus minimizes the possibility of endangering civilian lives and civilian casualties.
In response to the terrorist act of assassinating Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Mahdi Abu Muhandis and their companions, Islamic Revolution Guard Corps fired missiles at a US airbase in Iraq.
The US military base in Ain al-Assad, is one of the most important US military bases in Iraq where all US drones and helicopters are located. 4,000 US troops are deployed there.
In the early hours of January 8, the IRGC's aerospace unit launched a successful attack against US forces in Ain al-Assad airbase in western Iraq and another in Erbil, in the north of the country.
The attack came in response to a US terrorist drone strike days earlier that martyred one of Iran's top Generals, the former Commander of IRGC's elite Quds Force, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei described the attack as a “slap in the face” for the Americans and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called it a "proportionate measure" which came "in self-defense". 205/211/219
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