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Trump Says 52 Targets Already Lined Up if Iran Retaliates

Associated Press

   The body of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone
   strike, arrived Sunday in Iran to throngs of mourners, as President
   Donald Trump threatened to bomb 52 sites in the Islamic Republic if
   Tehran retaliates by attacking Americans

   Soleimani's death Friday in Iraq further heightens tensions between
   Tehran and Washington after months of trading attacks and threats that
   put the wider Middle East on edge. The conflict is rooted in Trump
   pulling out of Iran's nuclear deal with world powers, an accord likely
   to further unravel as Tehran is expected to announce as early as Sunday
   it will break another set of limits.

   Iran has promised "harsh revenge." Already, a series of rockets
   launched in Baghdad late Saturday fell inside or near the Green Zone,
   which houses government offices and foreign embassies, including the
   U.S. Embassy.

   Trump wrote on Twitter afterward that the U.S. had already "targeted 52
   Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many
   years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian
   culture."

   Trump did not identify the targets but added that they would be "HIT
   VERY FAST AND VERY HARD."

     Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as
     revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had
     just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention
     all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including
     recently....
     -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) [1]January 4, 2020

     ....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages
     taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important
     to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself,
     WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
     -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) [2]January 4, 2020

   Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, campaigning in Iowa,
   questioned whether Trump was acting alone or with support of allies.
   "We have no idea -- I have no idea -- whether he has any plan at all,"
   the former vice president told reporters Saturday night. "But when he
   makes statements like that, it just seems to me to be he's going off on
   a tweet storm on his own, and it's incredibly dangerous and
   irresponsible."

   After thousands in Baghdad on Saturday mourned Soleimani and others
   killed in the strike, authorities flew the general's body to the
   southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, according to the state-run IRNA
   news agency. An honor guard stood by early Sunday as mourners carried
   the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and other Guard members off the
   tarmac.

   Officials brought Soleimani's body to Ahvaz, a city that was a focus of
   fighting during the bloody, 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran in which
   the general slowly grew to prominence. After that war, Soleimani joined
   the Guard's newly formed Quds, or Jersualem, Force, an expeditionary
   force that works with Iranian proxy forces in countries like Iraq,
   Lebanon and Yemen.

   Authorities also plan to take Soleimani's body to Mashhad later Sunday,
   as well as Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions,
   then onto his hometown of Kerman for burial Tuesday.
   

References

   Visible links
   1. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213593965838163968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
   2. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1213593975732527112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

   Hidden links:
   3. file://localhost/middle-east/voa-news-iran/thousands-march-baghdad-mourn-death-irans-top-military-general

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