Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran buried President Ebrahim Raisi at the country’s holiest Shiite shrine on Thursday, days after his death in a helicopter crash that added to the woes of a country already beset by international sanctions, internal unrest and tensions abroad.
Raisi, who died alongside the country’s foreign minister and six others, was lowered by mourners into a grave at the Shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, where the eighth imam of Shiite Islam is buried and where millions of pilgrims visit him. every year. Hundreds of thousands of people dressed in black crowded around the shrine under its iconic golden dome, crying and beating their chests in sadness in a sign of mourning common in Shiite ceremonies.
A hadith or saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad states that anyone who is in pain or sin will be relieved by visiting him. But Thursday’s massive procession offered little relief for Iran and its many challenges.
The days of services for Raisi have not drawn the same crowds in this nation of more than 80 million people as the 2020 gatherings for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.
In Tehran alone, an estimated one million people took to the streets to see Soleimani, something onlookers said they did not see at the men’s commemorations on Wednesday. However, ceremonies have repeatedly invoked the general and included her image, likely creating an association between the men.
It is a potential sign of public feelings about Raisi’s presidency, which included a harsh government crackdown on dissent during protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained for allegedly not wearing her mandatory headscarf as authorities pleased. .
That repression, as well as Iran’s difficult economy, have not been mentioned in the hours of coverage provided by state television and newspapers. Raisi’s involvement in the mass execution of some 5,000 dissidents at the end of the Iran-Iraq war was never discussed.
Little information has emerged about the cause of the crash of the old Bell helicopter that went down in a foggy, mountainous region. The country’s security forces were expected to investigate in the coming days.
Prosecutors have warned against any public signs of celebration surrounding Raisi’s death, and a heavy security presence has been seen in Tehran since the crash.
Raisi, 63, had been discussed as a possible successor to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85. The next presidential elections are 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.
Acting President Mohammad Mokhber, a relatively unknown first vice president until Sunday’s accident, assumed his role and even attended a meeting between Khamenei and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday.
Mashhad long served as a base for Raisi. In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi to head the Imam Reza charitable foundation, which runs a vast conglomerate of businesses and donations in Iran, as well as overseeing the shrine. It is one of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or assets confiscated after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
These foundations offer no public accounting of their expenditures and are answerable only to Iran’s supreme leader. The Imam Reza charity, known as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is believed to be one of the largest in the country. Analysts estimate its value in the tens of billions of dollars as it owns nearly half the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, about 750 kilometers (470 miles) east of Iran’s capital, Tehran. .
Raisi is the country’s first important politician buried in the shrine, which represents a great honor for the cleric. His father-in-law is the Friday prayer leader in the city.
The deaths of Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian come as Iran continues to back militia groups across the Middle East to pressure its enemies, namely Israel and the United States. Mourners have sung against both nations at ceremonies.
State media circulated photographs Thursday showing a meeting between the paramilitary chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the head of its Quds Expeditionary Force and representatives of Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
On Thursday morning, thousands of people dressed in black gathered along a main boulevard in the city of Birjand, where Raisi was once a member of the Assembly of Experts in Iran’s South Khorasan province, along of the border with Afghanistan. There and in Mashhad, mourners on the streets approached a truck carrying his coffin, and some threw scarves and other items at it for a blessing.
Meanwhile, former Foreign Ministers Mohammed Javad Zarif and Ali Akbar Salehi and other dignitaries paid their respects to Amirabdollahian at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, where his coffin was displayed. His body was later buried in Shahr-e Rey, on the outskirts of Tehran, in the Abdol Azim shrine, another final resting place for those famous in Persian history.
“Give our regards to Soleimani,” said a religious singer as Amirabdollahian’s body was placed in its final resting place, referring to the slain general.
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Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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