US vows to hit 52 sites if Tehran retaliates over killing of general

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump said the US has identified 52 Iranian sites it would hit if Tehran retaliates against the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, stepping back from more conciliatory comments he made after the drone strike on the Islamic Republic’s most powerful military commander.
Trump’s tough talk followed Tehran’s threat of a protracted response, and eclipsed his assertion a day earlier that the US hadn’t launched the attack near Baghdad airport to “start a war.” It also seemed to reverse the efforts of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who in the past two days has repeatedly reaffirmed that the US remains committed to defusing tensions with Iran as he talked with officials across the Middle East and Russia.
Soleimani’s body arrived in Iran on Sunday, and thousands of mourners poured into the southwestern city of Ahvaz to attend services and sermons, according to footage on
state TV.
The body will be taken to funeral processions across the country before his burial, expected on Tuesday, in his southeastern hometown of Kerman, state TV said.
In Baghdad, thousands attended memorial services for the general and a powerful Iraqi militia commander also killed in the strike.
A possible escalation of the proxy war between the US and Iran that’s been playing out for years. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed that the US will witness “the effects of their mistake for “many, many years to come,” and another Iranian official told the state broadcaster that three dozen US military bases and facilities are within reach of Iran’s defense forces, the closest in Bahrain.
Gulf states urged calm as the prospect of a new conflict in the world’s top energy-exporting region loomed. Tehran’s capacity for retaliation may be crimped, however, by the dire condition of the Iranian economy, which has been clobbered by American sanctions reimposed after Trump withdrew from the landmark nuclear accord in 2018.
Moreover, months of anti-government protests have challenged the regime’s dominance at home, as well as in Iraq and Lebanon, where Soleimani worked with proxy militias that extended Iran’s reach across the Middle East.
There was some immediate fallout, however. Rockets slammed into Baghdad’s Green Zone, which contains the US Embassy and an airbase that houses American troops.
No coalition casualties were reported.
Trump said he approved the strike in Iraq because Soleimani was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks” against American diplomats and military personnel, though he provided no evidence to back up that claim. Some 3,500 additional US troops were ordered dispatched to the region after Soleimani’s assassination, to join more than 50,000 personnel already there.
Soleimani, who headed the unit responsible for the foreign operations of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was a household name in Iran where he’s celebrated for helping to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria and countering US influence. He’d been sanctioned by the US since 2007, and in May, Washington designated the Guards a foreign terrorist organisation. Iran named Esmail Ghaani, another veteran of Middle East conflicts, as Soleimani’s replacement.
Preceding US administrations had balked at assassinating the general, wary of the repercussions despite his responsibility for hundreds of
US fatalities.