“We are indebted to Martyr Soleimani,” Faleh al-Fayyad said on Friday addressing a ceremony marking the first martyrdom anniversary of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran.

Lieutenant General Soleimani and his Iraqi comrade Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, were assassinated along with their companions in a US terror drone strike authorized by Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020. Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill two days later, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.

Elsewhere in his remarks, al-Fayyad referred to recent normalization deals between certain Arab countries and Israel, saying Iraq will always stand by Palestine and will never follow in the footsteps of the UAE and Bahrain.

In mid-September, US President Donald Trump presided over the signing of the normalization pacts between Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Manama. During a ceremony at the White House, Trump said “five or six” other countries were close to making similar agreements with Israel, but did not name them.

Sudan and Morroco became next in line to normalize with Israel.

Also, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement Ziad al-Nakhala made a speech at the ceremony, saying that commander Lieutenant General Soleimani was an obstacle to the US plots against regional countries.

“Martyr Soleimani was an obstacle to the plots devised by the Great Satan (against nations in the region),” he said.