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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran on Thursday ready to inter its late president on the holiest web site for Shiite Muslims within the Islamic Republic, a ultimate signal of respect for a protégé 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 caps days of processionals via 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.
Nonetheless, the providers haven’t drawn 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 is a potential 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, detained for allegedly not carrying her necessary scarf to authorities’ liking.
That crackdown, in addition to Iran’s struggling economic system, have gone unmentioned within the hours of protection supplied by state tv and in newspapers. Additionally by no means mentioned was Raisi’s concerned within the mass execution of an estimated 5,000 dissidents on the finish of the Iran-Iraq conflict.
Prosecutors have warned individuals in opposition to exhibiting any public indicators of celebrating Raisi’s loss of life and a heavy safety pressure presence has been seen in Tehran because the crash.
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 reached 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: “That is the shrine.”
Hours later, Raisi’s casket arrived in Mashhad. He shall be buried on the Imam Reza Shrine, the place Shiite Islam’s eighth imam is buried. The area lengthy has been related to Shiite pilgrimage. A hadith attributed to Islam’s Prophet Mohammad says anybody with sorrow or sin shall be relieved via visiting there.
In 2016, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Raisi to run the Imam Reza charity basis, which manages an unlimited conglomerate of companies and endowments in Iran, in addition to oversees the shrine. It’s one among many bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or belongings seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
These foundations provide no public accounting of their spending and reply solely to Iran’s supreme chief. The Imam Reza charity, often known as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is believed to be one of many greatest within the nation. Analysts estimate its value at tens of billions of {dollars} because it owns nearly half the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest metropolis.
Raisi would be the first 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, International 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 doable successor to Iran’s supreme chief, the 85-year-old Khamenei. None of Iran’s dwelling previous presidents — apart from Khamenei, who was president from 1981 till 1989 — could possibly be seen in state tv footage of Wednesday’s prayers. The authorities gave no rationalization for his or her obvious absence.
Iran has set June 28 as the subsequent presidential election. For now, there’s no clear favourite for the place amongst Iran’s political elite — notably nobody who’s a Shiite cleric, like Raisi.
Appearing President Mohammad Mokhber, a comparatively unknown first vice chairman 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 circulated photographs Thursday exhibiting a gathering between Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard chief and the pinnacle of its expeditionary Quds Pressure and representatives from Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. That is one other signal of Iran’s authorities’s dedication to these militias it arms in opposition to its rivals, Israel and the US.
In the meantime, former International Ministers Mohammed Javad Zarif and Ali Akbar Salehi and different dignitaries paid respects to Amirabdollahian at Iran’s International Ministry, the place his casket was placed on show. His physique later was interred in Shahr-e Rey simply outdoors of Tehran on the Abdol Azim shrine, one other ultimate 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 ultimate resting place, referring to the slain common.
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Related Press author Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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