Hezbollah, the leading militant organization in Lebanon, announced on Sunday that Iran's missile attacks on two US military installations in Iraq was just the start of the retaliation for the United States' assassination of a top Iranian military official in a drone strike.
Hassan Nasrallah said Iran's missile attack on US bases was as a "slap to America". The strikes, which military analysts describe as "forewarned" did accomplish its goal: a limited strike meant as a show of force and not one intended to cause heavy casualties.
Hezbollah's commander, who has strong ties with Iran, said the missile attack was the "first step on a long road" that will guarantee American forces will leave the region.
Considered as the second most powerful man in Iran and commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Soleimani was the brains behind Tehran's interventions in regional power struggles from Syria and Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen.
"We are talking about the start of a tedious process, a new era in the region," Nasrallah said, who's one-hour and 30-minute speech on live television highlighted a week since the killing of Soleimani.
According to Nasrallah, the Americans have to remove all their military assets, troops, officers, and naval equipment from Iraqi soil. The Americans must "leave vertically and horizontally, and that is the decision," Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah said after Soleimani's death "the world is a different place, and not a safer one as some US officials have said."
Iran had been promising a forceful response to the killing of Soleimani for days. But Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted after the missile attack that the country had "concluded proportionate self-defense measures."
Nasrallah lauded Soleimani for his continued dedication to Hezbollah. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has provided training to Hezbollah, who fought alongside Iran-sponsored militias under the directive of Soleimani during the conflict in Syria.
Nasrallah also lauded Iran's leadership for admitting to unintentionally shooting down an Ukranian commercial plane on the night it carried out the missile attacks.
Early Wednesday's plane crash killed all 176 passengers, mostly Canadians and Iranians. Iran had originally pointed to a technical failure, and argued that the armed forces should not be held accountable.
Hezbollah is one of Iran's main allies in the region and is a sworn enemy of Israel, with which it has had a series of confrontations the last one of which was in 2006.
