Iran prepares funeral for late president, foreign minister and others killed in helicopter crash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran prepared Thursday to bury its late president at the holiest site for Shiite Muslims in the Islamic Republic, a final sign of respect for a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader, the Killed in a helicopter crash earlier this week.

The funeral of President Ebrahim Raisi at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad is the culmination of days of processions across much of Iran aimed at strengthening the theocracy after he, the country’s foreign minister and six others were killed in the plane crash.

However, the services did not attract as many people as those who gathered in 2020 for services for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.

This is a potential sign of public feelings toward Raisi’s presidency, which has seen the government crack down on all dissent during protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

This crackdown and Iran’s faltering economy went unmentioned in hours of reports on state television and newspapers. There was also no mention of Raisi’s involvement in the mass execution of an estimated 5,000 dissidents at the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

The public prosecutor has warned the population against celebrating Raisi’s death in public. Since the crash, there has been a strong security presence in Tehran.

On Thursday morning, thousands in black gathered on a main boulevard in the city of Birjand, Raisi’s hometown in Iran’s South Khorasan province on the Afghan border. A semi-trailer truck carried his coffin down the street as mourners touched it and threw scarves and other objects to place against it for blessing. A sign on the truck read: “This is the shrine.”

Raisi will later be buried at the Imam Reza Shrine, where the 8th Imam of Shia Islam is buried. The region has long been associated with Shiite pilgrimages. A hadith attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad states that anyone who has sorrow or sins will find relief by visiting there.

In 2016, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Raisi to head the Imam Reza Charitable Foundation, which manages a vast conglomerate of companies and foundations in Iran and oversees the shrine. It is one of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, funded by donations or assets seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

These foundations do not publicly account for their spending and are responsible only to Iran’s supreme leader. The Imam Reza charity, known in Farsi as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi,” is considered one of the largest in the country. Analysts estimate its assets to be in the tens of billions of dollars, as it owns almost half of the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city.

Raisi will be the country’s first high-ranking politician to be buried at the shrine, a great honor for the cleric.

The deaths of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others in Sunday’s crash come at a politically sensitive time for Iran, both at home and abroad.

The 63-year-old Raisi had been discussed as a possible successor to Iran’s supreme leader, the 85-year-old Khamenei. None of Iran’s living former presidents – except Khamenei, who was president from 1981 to 1989 – were seen in state television footage of Wednesday prayers. Authorities gave no explanation for their apparent absence.

Iran has scheduled June 28 as its next presidential election. There is currently no clear favorite for the office among Iran’s political elite – especially no one who is a Shiite cleric like Raisi. Incumbent President Mohammad Mokhber, a relatively unknown first vice president until Sunday’s crash, has taken on his role and even attended a meeting between Khamenei and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday.

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Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.