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Massive Tehran Crowd Mourns Soleimani at His Funeral

By VOA News January 06, 2020

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran Monday to mourn top general Qassem Soleimani at his funeral, even as Iranian officials vowed to exact revenge against the U.S. for the drone attack that killed him.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wept as he prayed over Soleimani's flag-draped coffin and those of five other "martyrs" killed in the U.S. strike outside the Baghdad airport late last week, an attack ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Black-clad Iranians carried anti-American signs and portraits of the 62-year-old Soleimani, who was the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force. As they marched, the mourners chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, in an emotional speech, called Trump a "symbol of stupidity and a toy in the hand of Zionism, don't think that with the martyrdom of my father everything is over."

The U.S. has blamed Soleimani for killing American troops in Iraq and plotting new attacks they claim posed an "imminent threat," while not publicly disclosing the nature of the threat.

The war of words between Trump and Iranian officials was unabated. Trump vowed in an all-caps Twitter comment, "IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!" after Tehran's Sunday announcement that it was further curbing its compliance with the 2015 international pact restraining its nuclear program, a deal that Trump withdrew the U.S. from.

With Iran's threats to seek revenge for Soleimani's killing, Trump vowed late Sunday that the U.S. will strike "very hard and very fast" at as many as 52 Iranian targets if the Islamic republic attacks U.S. personnel or assets, the number 52 representing the number of Americans Tehran took hostage in 1979 for 444 days.

"They're allowed to kill our people," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rebuffed Trump's threat, saying, "Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation." It was a reference to the U.S. mistakenly shooting down an Iranian passenger jet flying over the Persian Gulf in 1988, killing all 290 people aboard the aircraft. Then U.S. President Ronald Reagan expressed deep regret over the incident and the U.S. paid nearly $62 million in reparations to the victims' families.

As the threats and counter-threats ricocheted between Tehran and Washington, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged Iran to avoid "further violence and provocations." At an emergency session of NATO's ruling council in Brussels, U.S. officials briefed allies about the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

Stoltenberg said it was a "U.S. decision" to launch the attack, but added that the other 28 NATO countries had longstanding concerns about aggressive Iranian military actions in the Middle East.

The White House said that on Wednesday it would brief the entire 100-member Senate on the drone attack. While Republicans have generally supported Trump's action to take out Soleimani, opposition Democrats have called for release of underlying U.S. intelligence reports that Trump administration officials say show an "imminent threat" that Soleimani was about to launch new attacks on American personnel and operations in the Mideast.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic colleagues that the House will vote this week on a war powers resolution "to limit the President's military actions regarding Iran."

"It reasserts Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration's military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days," Pelosi wrote.

She called last week's airstrike "provocative and disproportionate," and said it endangered U.S. troops while escalating tensions with Iran.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen told the "Fox News Sunday" show, "We're now headed very close to the precipice of war," adding "you just can't go around and kill" world figures the U.S. opposes. "The president is not entitled to take us to war" without congressional authorization.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump's Republican allies, said the president "did the right thing" and that his national security team is "doing a great job helping President Trump navigate Iranian provocations."

Republican Congressman Mike Johnson also backed Trump, writing on Twitter, "Now we must remain united against Iranian aggression while praying and working for de-escalation."

Trump tweeted Sunday that his social media posts "will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!"

Yale University law professor Oona Hathaway told VOA the president cannot notify Congress of his intent to go to war by tweet and said he would be breaking several laws.

"Any time the president involves the armed forces into hostilities, he must -- at a minimum -- notify Congress within 48 hours," she said.

Hathaway added that a president is obligated to consult with Congress before putting the armed forces into any hostilities. She said a "disproportionate" response would break international law, which says any action taken in self-defense must be proportionate to the threat.

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement Monday citing the urgent need for de-escalation and saying a new crisis in Iraq "risks jeopardizing years of effort" to stabilize the country.

They further called on Iran to "refrain from further violent action or proliferation" and to reverse the steps it has taken away from the 2015 nuclear agreement that constrained its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Iran said Sunday it is no longer limiting the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, a move that follows earlier actions to ignore limits on the amount of uranium it is allowed to stockpile and how highly it can enrich uranium.

"Iran's nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion," a government statement said.

Iran did not make any explicit threats to build a nuclear weapon, something it has always denied it wants to do. It also said it will still cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran's gradual stepping back from the commitments it made under the nuclear deal have come since Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Islamic republic.