Editor’s note: This story has been significantly edited at the request of the soldier’s mother saying the content appeared to have provided sensitive information and it poses a risk to her daughter and her family.
A Tongan couple whose daughter is joining the US military mission in Iraq said they struggled every day with the feeling that someone would knock on their door to say something bad had happened to their daughter.
“We are extremely anxious and living in fear. Every day we were of a view that a soldier would knock on our door to inform us of a bad news,” her father said in Tongan.
He said a series of attacks had been launched by Iranian activists against US military campsites including their daughter’s before the US murdered Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3.
The US murdered Iran’s most powerful military commander by firing rockets from a US drone as he left Baghdad airport in an armoured convoy.
Following the assassination of Soleimani, there have been fears of imminent war between Iran and the United States.
In retaliation, Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at two Iraqi military bases hosting United States troops. No casualties were reported and US decribed the damages as minimal.
“The missiles targeted the Ain al-Assad air base in Anbar Province and a facility near Erbil’s airport in northern Iraq early on Wednesday morning,” Aljazeera reported.
Following the missiles attacks analysts said Tehran did not want to provoke an actual war with the US, despite it calls for vengeance.
Yesterday President Trump said Iran appeared “to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.”
He also had “previously offered to hold talks with Iran without preconditions – and to meet President Hassan Rouhani.”
In September, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran would never engage in bilateral talks, saying it was part of America’s policy “to put pressure on Iran”.
In a letter to the UN, the US justified the killing of “Soleimani as an act of self-defence.”
