Iran Prepares to Bury Late President Raisi at Holy Shia Shrine

Iran prepared to bury its late president at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, the holiest burial site for Shia Muslims in the Islamic Republic.

This burial serves as a final sign of respect for President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash earlier this week.

The funeral procession for Raisi has traversed much of Iran, aiming to bolster the country’s theocracy following the crash that claimed the lives of Raisi, the country’s foreign minister, and six others. 

However, the turnout for Raisi’s services has not matched the massive crowds that mourned Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020. He was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad. 

This discrepancy potentially reflects public sentiment towards Raisi’s presidency, which was marked by a harsh crackdown on dissent during protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in custody. Amini had been detained for allegedly wearing her mandatory headscarf "improperly".

The crackdown and Iran’s struggling economy have gone unmentioned in the extensive coverage provided by state television and newspapers. 

Additionally, there has been no discussion of Raisi’s involvement in the mass execution of an estimated 5,000 dissidents at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. 

Prosecutors have issued warnings against public celebrations of Raisi’s death, and a heavy security presence has been noted in Tehran since the crash.

On Thursday morning, thousands of mourners dressed in black gathered along a main boulevard in Birjand – Raisi’s hometown in Iran’s South Khorasan province near the Afghan border. 

Later, Raisi will be buried at the Imam Reza Shrine, where Shia Islam’s 8th imam is interred.

The shrine has long been a site of Shia pilgrimage.

In 2016, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Raisi to oversee the Imam Reza charity foundation, which manages an array of businesses and endowments in Iran, besides the shrine. 

This foundation is one of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, supported by donations and assets seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.