Thousands of Iranians gathered Tuesday in the city of Kerman for the burial of top military commander Qassem Soleimani, whose killing last week in a U.S. airstrike has sparked fears of wider conflict as the two countries threatened strong responses to each other's actions.
The assembly of black-clad mourners in Soleimani's hometown was reminiscent of gatherings that have taken place this week in Tehran, Qom and Ahvaz.
In this aerial photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, mourners attend a funeral ceremony for Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades.
It also included the leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, adding the latest threats to exact revenge against the United States for the airstrike, which took place outside Baghdad's airport on Friday.
U.S. officials have blamed Soleimani for the killings of American troops in Iraq by Iranian-backed forces and accused him of plotting "imminent" new attacks against U.S. personnel in the region, while not publicly disclosing the nature of the threat.
With tensions between the United States and Iran raised, the U.S. has denied Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif a visa to travel to New York for upcoming United Nations meetings.
Following the airstrike, Iran also announced it was further cutting its compliance with the 2015 agreement that restrained its nuclear program. That prompted U.S. President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the deal and applied new sanctions against Iran, to tweet Monday, "IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!"
Trump also vowed late Sunday that the U.S. will strike "very hard and very fast" at as many as 52 Iranian targets if Iran attacks U.S. personnel or assets. The number 52 represents 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 on Monday, tweeting: "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.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg briefs media after a meeting of the Alliance's ambassadors over the security situation in the Middle East, in Brussels, Belgium January 6, 2020.
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.
In another development, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud in Washington. The State Department said Pompeo thanked Al Saud for Riyadh's "continued support" and for "working with the U.S. to counter the threat posed by the Iranian regime."
Speaking to VOA Persian, London-based Iranian dissident and political analyst Alireza Nourizadeh said the demise of Soleimani is welcome news to several of Iran's neighbors.
"Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Lebanon -- they were targets of Soleimani and endured his attacks," Nourizadeh said.
In another VOA Persian interview, former U.S. ambassador to the UAE Barbara Leaf said majority-Sunni Gulf nations Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who long have accused predominantly-Shi'ite Iran of seeking regional hegemony, both have been "muted" in their public responses to the U.S. killing of Soleimani.
"The theme of their comments essentially is, it is time for de-escalation and a political approach to resolving these issues," said Leaf, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "It is safe to say that all Gulf countries as well as Iraqis are extremely anxious about the prospect of an escalation to actual clashes between the U.S. and Iran."
Senate Briefing
The White House said it will brief the entire 100-member Senate about the drone attack on Wednesday. While Republicans have generally supported Trump's action to take out Soleimani, opposition Democrats have called for publication of U.S. intelligence used by his aides to justify the strike.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Sunday 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.
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."
VOA Persian's Katherine Ahn and Afshar Sigarchi contributed to this report.