International Courant
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran ready Thursday to bury its late president on the holiest web site for Shiite Muslims within the Islamic Republic, a ultimate mark of respect for a protégé of Iran’s supreme chief who died in a helicopter crash earlier this week.
President Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral on the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad caps days of processions throughout a lot of Iran in an effort to strengthen the nation’s theocracy after the crash by which he, the nation’s international minister the nation and 6 others died.
Nevertheless, the companies haven’t drawn the identical crowds as those that gathered in 2020 for companies for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
It’s a doable signal of the general public’s emotions about Raisi’s presidency, which has seen the federal government crack down on any dissent throughout protests over the 2022 loss of life of Mahsa Amini, who was detained for allegedly not sporting her necessary headband, after the intention of the authorities.
That crackdown, in addition to Iran’s struggling financial system, have gone unnoticed in hours of stories protection on state tv and newspapers. Additionally by no means mentioned was Raisi’s involvement within the mass execution of an estimated 5,000 dissidents on the finish of the Iran-Iraq conflict.
Prosecutors have warned folks in opposition to exhibiting public indicators of celebrating Raisi’s loss of life and a heavy safety drive presence has been seen in Tehran for the reason that crash.
On Thursday morning, hundreds in black gathered alongside a principal boulevard within the city of Birjand, Raisi’s hometown in Iran’s South Khorasan province, alongside the Afghan border. A truck carried his coffin down the road as mourners reached out to the touch it and threw scarves and different objects that have been positioned in opposition to it as a blessing. An indication on the truck learn: “That is the Shrine.”
Hours later, Raisi’s coffin arrived in Mashhad. He shall be buried on the Imam Reza Shrine, the place Shia Islam’s eighth imam is buried. The area has lengthy been related to Shia pilgrimages. A hadith attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad says that anybody with sorrow or sin will achieve reduction by visiting there.
In 2016, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Raisi to guide the Imam Reza charitable basis, which controls an enormous conglomerate of corporations and endowments in Iran, and oversees the shrine. It’s one in every of a number of bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or belongings seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
These foundations don’t publicly account for his or her expenditures and are solely accountable to Iran’s Supreme Chief. The Imam Reza charity, identified in Farsi as ‘Astan-e Quds-e Razavi’, is taken into account one of many largest within the nation. Analysts estimate its worth at tens of billions of {dollars}, because the nation owns virtually half of the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest metropolis.
Raisi would be the nation’s first high politician to be buried on the shrine, an excellent honor for the cleric.
The deaths of Raisi, Overseas Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and 6 others in Sunday’s crash come at a politically delicate time for Iran, each at residence and overseas.
Raisi, who was 63, was mentioned as a doable successor to Iran’s supreme chief, 85-year-old Khamenei. None of Iran’s former presidents — besides Khamenei, who was president from 1981 to 1989 — have been seen in state tv footage of Wednesday’s prayers. Authorities offered no rationalization for his or her obvious absence.
Iran has declared June 28 as the subsequent presidential election. For now, there isn’t a clear favourite for the place amongst Iran’s political elite — particularly nobody who’s a Shiite cleric like Raisi.
Appearing President Mohammad Mokhber, a comparatively unknown first vp till Sunday’s crash, has stepped into his function and even attended a gathering between Khamenei and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday. State media on Thursday distributed images of a gathering between the top of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards and the top of its Quds expeditionary drive and representatives of Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. That’s one other signal of the Iranian authorities’s dedication to the militias it arms in opposition to its rivals, Israel and the US.
In the meantime, former Overseas Ministers Mohammed Javad Zarif and Ali Akbar Salehi and different dignitaries paid their respects to Amirabdollahian on the Iranian Overseas Ministry, the place his coffin was on show. His physique was later buried in Shahr-e Rey, simply outdoors Tehran, on the Abdol Azim Shrine, one other ultimate resting place for these well-known in Persian historical past.
“Give my regards to Soleimani,” a non secular singer mentioned as Amirabdollahian’s physique was positioned in its ultimate resting place, referring to the slain basic.
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Related Press author Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
