Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday presided over a funeral for the country’s late president, foreign minister and others who died in a helicopter crash, as tens of thousands of people later followed a procession with their coffins through the capital. , Tehran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei held the service at Tehran University, with the coffins of the dead draped in Iranian flags with their photographs. On the coffin of the late President Ebrahim Raisi was a black turban, marking him as a direct descendant of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
“O Allah, we saw nothing but good in him,” Khamenei said in the standard prayer for the dead in Arabic, the language of Islam’s holy book, the Quran. He soon left and the crowd inside rushed to the front, reaching out to touch the coffins. Iran’s acting president, Mohammad Mokhber, stood nearby and wept openly during the service.
The people then carried the coffins on their shoulders, with chants outside of “Death to America!” They were loaded onto a tractor-trailer for a procession through central Tehran to Azadi, or “Freedom,” Square, where Raisi has given speeches in the past. People threw scarves and other items for attendees in the truck to touch the coffins to receive a blessing.
In attendance were the top leaders of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, one of the country’s main power centers. Also present was Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the militant group that Iran has armed and supported during the current war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Before the funeral, Haniyeh spoke and a master of ceremonies led the crowd in chanting, “Death to Israel!”
“I come on behalf of the Palestinian people, on behalf of the resistance factions of Gaza… to express our condolences,” Haniyeh told those gathered.
He also recounted his meeting with Raisi in Tehran during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, and heard the president say that the Palestinian issue remains the key to the Muslim world.
The Muslim world “must fulfill its obligations to the Palestinians to liberate their land,” Haniyeh said, recalling Raisi’s words. He also described Raisi calling the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage. an “earthquake in the heart of the Zionist entity.” Since then, the war has led to the deaths of 35,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and hundreds more in the West Bank in Israeli operations.
Also expected to attend the services in Tehran were Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a delegation from Afghanistan’s Taliban, including its Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mutaqqi. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani also flew to the ceremony, along with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Even Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry traveled to Tehran, even though diplomatic relations between the countries were severed following the 1979 revolution. Egypt and Iran have recently discussed reestablishing ties.
But notably, none of Iran’s living former presidents, other than Khamenei, could be seen in state television footage of the prayers. Among them are the reformist Mohammad Khatami, the intransigent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani, all individuals who maintain some political prestige within Iran’s tightly controlled political system.
Authorities did not offer any explanation for his absence at the event, which takes place weeks before the presidential elections scheduled for June 28. For now, there is no clear favorite for the job among Iran’s political elite, especially no one who is a Shiite cleric, like Raisi.
The Iranian theocracy declared five days of mourning for Sunday’s accident, encouraging people to attend public mourning sessions. Typically, government employees and schoolchildren flock to these events, while others participate out of patriotism, curiosity, or to witness historical events.
For Iran’s Shiite theocracy, mass demonstrations have been crucial to demonstrating the legitimacy of its leadership since millions of people filled the streets of Tehran to welcome Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, and also attended his funeral 10 years later.
An estimated one million people attended processions in 2020 in honor of the late Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. At that ceremony, Khamenei openly wept over Soleimani’s coffin alongside Raisi. On Wednesday, Khamenei seemed calm, although he later hugged relatives of the dead as he left.
It remains to be seen whether Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others draw the same crowd, particularly since Raisi died in a helicopter crash, won office in the lowest turnout presidential election in the country’s history and presided over vast repressive measures against all dissent.
Prosecutors have already warned people not to show public signs of celebrating his death and a heavy presence of security forces has been seen on the streets of Tehran since the accident.
Raisi, 63, had been discussed as a possible successor to Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei, 85. The only other person suggested was Khamenei’s 55-year-old son Mojtaba. However, concerns have been raised about the position falling to a family member, particularly after the revolution overthrew the Shah’s Pahlavi hereditary monarchy.
Meanwhile, an Iranian official offered a new explanation for Sunday’s crash, further fueling the theory that bad weather caused it. Gholamhossein Esmaili, who was traveling in one of the other two helicopters in Raisi’s entourage, told state television that the weather was fine when the plane took off. But Raisi’s helicopter disappeared into dense clouds and the others were unable to communicate with the plane by radio, forcing them to land in a nearby copper mine.
Neither Amirabdollahian nor a bodyguard on board responded to the calls, but Tabriz Friday prayer leader Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem somehow responded to two mobile phone calls, Esmaili said. It was unclear why Iran could not trace the phone’s signal.
“When we found the crash site, the conditions of the bodies indicated that Ayatollah Raisi and other companions had died instantly but Ale-Hashem… (died) after several hours,” he said.
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Associated Press journalists Joseph Krauss in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Samy Magdy in Cairo; and Munir Ahmed and Riazat Butt in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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