Speaker: Iran's new parliament views talks with US 'harmful'

Iran's newly-formed parliament deems any negotiations with the United States as harmful, its speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf said in his first main speech at the chamber on Sunday. 

Qalibaf, a former commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)'s air force, said the new parliament's agenda is to complete Iran's revenge for the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.   

The new parliament, he said, "views the fight against the global arrogance both an ideological goal and a strategic benefit, and negotiation and compromise with the US, which is the axis of the global arrogance, fruitless and harmful".

"Our strategy in confronting the terrorist America is to complete the chain of revenge for the blood of Martyr Soleimani," Qalibaf added. 

Iran responded to the terrorist assassination with a volley of precision-guided missiles which pommeled a US military base in Iraq - in a move which Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei described as just "a slap on the face" for Washington.  

Qalibaf said, "The work that began with the unprecedented attack on the Ain al-Asad base and continued with the shattering of America's hollow formidableness will be completed with the full expulsion of the terrorist US army from the region."

General Soleimnai, who headed the IRGC's Quds Force, was assassinated on January 3 by the US in Iraq, where he was seen as the driving force behind the battles that led to the collapse of the Daesh terrorist group.

In the early hours of January 8, Iran launched several missiles at Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq’s Anbar Province and another American military facility in Kurdistan’s regional capital, Erbil, in revenge for the US terrorist act.

US President Donald Trump initially said no Americans were harmed in the missile attack, but the Pentagon had to revise up its figures several times, last saying 109 US troops had suffered traumatic brain injury. 

First video from US base describes alarm, massive impact

CNN has taken the first tour of the American Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq, which was damaged by Iran

Qalibaf made the remarks as he outlined the priorities of the new parliament.

"Given the role which the 11th parliament considers for itself in the Islamic Revolution's civilization building, the chamber will not accept any compromise on the main ideals of the Islamic Revolution," he said.

The new parliament "regards firm confrontation with foreign enemies, especially America and the Zionist regime, among its fundamental principles," he said.

"It will not show any courtesy on demarcating its borders with seditious and hypocritical currents in the country," he added.

Supporting the Palestinian nation, along with the oppressed Yemenis, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad is also the "revolutionary and national duty" of the new parliament, Qalibaf said.

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