Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Thursday that the US threat to kill the successor to the prominent military commander Qassem Soleimani was a sign of "targeted American government terrorism."

Brian Hook, the US special envoy to Iran, said that Soleimani's successor would meet the same fate if he followed the same path of killing Americans.

The Supreme Leader of the Iranian Republic, Ali Khamenei, had announced the appointment of Brigadier Ismail Qani, to succeed Soleimani, hours after his death.

Soleimani was killed in a US airliner strike on January 3 in Baghdad.

Qani held the position of Deputy Commander of the Quds Force for nearly two decades, after he was included in several positions within the Revolutionary Guards, most notably the Operations Command in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ismail Qani is seen as "the most militant shadow" of Soleimani, as Soleimani has always been the spotlight in the presence of many issues and crises in the region, most notably Syria and Iraq.

Iranian media describe him as a solid man who is not very different from Soleimani, and has sufficient experience in dealing with the various fronts of fighting, as he is known to be from the theorists of the concept of popular formations.