Iran interred Thursday its late president on the holiest website for Shiite Muslims within the Islamic Republic, a remaining signal of respect for a protege of Iran’s supreme chief killed in a helicopter crash earlier this week.
President Ebrahim Raisi’s burial on the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad cappped days of processionals by means of a lot of Iran, looking for to bolster the nation’s theocracy after the crash that killed him, the nation’s overseas minister and 6 others.
However, the providers didn’t draw the identical crowds as those that gathered for providers for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, slain by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
It’s a possible signal of the general public’s emotions about Raisi’s presidency throughout which the federal government harshly cracked down on all dissent throughout protests over the 2022 loss of life of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
Thursday morning, 1000’s in black gathered alongside a important boulevard within the metropolis of Birjand, Raisi’s hometown in Iran’s South Khorasan province alongside the Afghan border.
A semitruck bore his casket down the road, with mourners reaching out to the touch it and tossing scarves and different gadgets to be positioned in opposition to it for a blessing. An indication on the truck learn: “This is the shrine.”
Hours later, Raisi’s casket arrived in Mashhad. He was buried on the Imam Reza Shrine, the place Shiite Islam’s eighth imam is buried. The area has lengthy been related to Shiite pilgrimage. A hadith attributed to Islam’s Prophet Mohammad says anybody with sorrow or sin shall be relieved by means of visiting there.
Raisi turned the primary high politician within the nation to be buried on the shrine, which represents a significant honor for the cleric.
The loss of life of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and 6 others within the crash on Sunday comes at a politically delicate second for Iran, each at residence and overseas.
Raisi, who was 63, had been mentioned as a attainable successor to Iran’s supreme chief, the 85-year-old Khamenei. None of Iran’s dwelling previous presidents – aside from Khamenei, who was president from 1981 till 1989 – might be seen in state tv footage of Wednesday’s prayers. The authorities didn’t clarify their obvious absence.
Iran has set June 28 as the following presidential election. For now, there’s no clear favourite for the place amongst Iran’s political elite – significantly nobody who’s a Shiite cleric, like Raisi.
Acting President Mohammad Mokhber, a comparatively unknown first vp till Sunday’s crash, has stepped into his position and even attended a gathering between Khamenei and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday.
State media circulated pictures Thursday displaying a gathering between Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard chief and the pinnacle of its expeditionary Quds Force and representatives from Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
That’s one other signal of Iran’s authorities’s dedication to these armed teams in opposition to its rivals, Israel and the United States.
Meanwhile, former Foreign Ministers Mohammed Javad Zarif and Ali Akbar Salehi and different dignitaries paid respects to Amirabdollahian at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the place his casket was placed on show.
His physique was later interred in Shahr-e Rey simply outdoors of Tehran on the Abdol Azim shrine, one other remaining resting place for these famed in Persian historical past.
“Give Soleimani our greetings,” a spiritual singer stated as Amirabdollahian’s physique was positioned inside its remaining resting place, referring to the slain normal.
Source: www.dailysabah.com