US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood has condemned remarks by an Iranian MP promising a bounty for President Trump’s assassination, calling them “ridiculous” and calling on the Iranian “regime” to change its tone.
“It’s just ridiculous but it gives you a sense of the terrorist underpinnings of that regime and that regime needs to change its behaviour,” Wood said, speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Ahmad Hamzeh, a member of the Iranian parliament from Kerman province, the home region of the late General Qasem Soleimani, promised that Kermanis would “give $3 million in cash to anyone who kills Trump.”
Hamzeh did not clarify whether the apparent bounty was his own initiative, or approved by Iran’s government. The Iranian government has yet to comment on the lawmaker’s remarks.
The MP’s $3 million bounty is the second time a price on the US president’s head has been proposed. Earlier this month, days after Soleimani’s assassination, an unnamed eulogist speaking at the general’s funeral said that if every one of Iran’s 80 million people were to pitch in $1, it would be enough to “gather an $80 million bounty on President Trump’s head.” The Iranian government did not comment on that idea.
The US drone strike assassination of Quds Force Commander Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3 caused the worst escalation of tensions between Iran and the United States since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and prompted Tehran to warn that it would retaliate. On January 8, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched nearly a dozen missiles at US bases in Iraq, warning Baghdad about the strikes several hours ahead of time.
Since then, further rocket strikes have pelted US facilities in Iraq, including Baghdad's Embassy Green Zone, with the attacks believed to be launched by Iraq’s government-allied Shia militias.
