Discussion of Iran Retaliation on The Critical Hour (1/7/2020)

Iran Vows Proportional Retaliation for US Soleimani Murder - This Isn't a Threat!

In response to Friday’s assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the military commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a rare appearance at a meeting of the government’s National Security Council to lay down the parameters for any retaliation. It must be a direct and proportional attack on American interests, he said, openly carried out by Iranian forces themselves," the New York Times reported Monday. Meanwhile, "Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Tuesday confirmed reports that the Trump administration has denied him a visa to enter the US for a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York this week," AFP reported. What are we to make of this, and what signals are being sent by both sides?
[Related articles: The Polemicist: Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back,
The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible, Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?]

Discussion of the Soleimani Assassinaton on The Critical Hour (1/3/2020)

Is the US on the Brink of War With Iran? US Airstrike Kills Top Iranian General

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time.

Qasem Soleimani, the son of a laborer who became Iran’s most revered military commander, was assassinated Friday in a targeted US drone air strike at the airport in Baghdad, Iraq. "Iranian politicians said, after his death, it would have been Soleimani’s dream to be 'martyred' by the US, Iran’s 'arch foe,' which he had relentlessly battled in the Middle East for the more than the two decades that he led the elite Quds force," the Financial Times reported. One of the fiercest military commanders in Iran in recent decades, the 62-year-old had long masterminded Iran’s support for Shia militant groups. "He was so close to Iran’s supreme leader that he saw him as a son.