Former CIA director and retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus on Sunday (January 5) said "it was impossible to overstate the significance" of the American airstrike that killed Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani.
Ex-CIA director says Soleimani killing 'bigger than Bin Laden'
"This is bigger than Bin Laden, it's bigger than Baghdadi," Petraeus told CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan, referring to the U.S. military operations that killed the former head of al-Qaeda in 2011 and took out the self-proclaimed caliph of Islamic State in 2018.
Petraeus called Soleimani, who commanded an elite unit within Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, "the equivalent, in U.S. terms, of the CIA director, CENTCOM commander, JSOC commander, and presidential envoy for the region." Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday.
Iran called the move an assassination and an act of terrorism, and vowed to retaliate.